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B    3    TET    23S 


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Some  Views  of  the;  Time  Problem 


A  T;ISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED  TO  THE  FACULTY  OF  THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL  OF  ARTS 

ANn  lttcratukl; 


Dfi     ■   I  JIN'.    ■'>B   PHU-OSOPIIY 


BY 


BENJAMIN  ;V.  VAN  RIPER 


MEN  ASH  A,    WISCONSIN 

GEORGE  BANTA  PL'BiJSHING  COMPANY 
igi6 


®ljp  IniufrBitg  of  (Eliiragn 


Some  Views  of  the  Time  Problem 


A  DISSERTATION 
SUBMITTED  TO  THE  FACULTY  OF  THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL  OF  ARTS 

AND  LITERATURE 


DEPARTMENT  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


BY 

BENJAMIN  W.  VAN  RIPER 


MENASHA,    WISCONSIN 

GEORGE  BANTA  ^^  3LISHIVG  COMPANY 
1916 


CONTENTS 
PARTI 

The  General  Issue 

I.    Introduction 5 

1.    History  of  the  philosophical  idea  of  time 6 

II.    Effect  of  the  Doctrine  of  Evolution  on  the  Problem 

1.  Change  and  time 11 

2.  The  philosophical  vs.  the  scientific  problem 12 

3.  The  idea  that  change  may  be  of  relations  only 17 

4.  Time  and  change  are  correlative 20 

III.  The  Relativity  of  Time;  the  Specious  Present 

1.  Of  our  estimates  of  time 23 

2 .  The  relativity  of  time  itself  to  consciousness 25 

3.  The  objective  fundamentum  of  the  time  series 27 

4.  Kant  on  the  time  direction 28 

5 .  The  question  of  the  irreversibility  of  the  series 30 

6.  "Idealistic  Eternalism" 34 

IV.  The  Metaphysical  Character  of  Time 

1.  Not  an  ontological  continuum 36 

2.  Its  infinity  and  infinite  divisibility 37 

V.     The  Relation  of  "the  Present"  to  Change 

1.  The  specious  present  the  only  real  one 40 

2.  Is  there  one  "present"  or  many? 43 

Ladd  vs.  Bradley 

VI.     On  the  Universality  and  Necessity  of  the  Time  Relation  46 


0  5  J  o  o 


PART  II 

A  Comparison  of  the  Views  of  Time  held  by  Professor  Eucken  and 

Bergson 

A.  Processor  Eucken's  Conception 53 

I.  Moral  Argument  for  the  Existence  of  the  Timeless  "Geistes- 

leben" 54 

II.  The  Presupposition  of  Timelessness  in  Knowledge  and  Truth...  56 

III.  His  Conception  of  the  "Present" 59 

IV.  The  Implications  of  a  Real  History 61 

B.  Professor  Bercson's  Conception 67 

I.  His  Theory  of  the  Intellect  as  a  "  Spatializer" , 68 

II.  His  Disproof  of  the  Idea  of  Intensive  Magnitude 71 

1.  Itsrelationtothequality  of  conscious  states 72 

2.  Its  explanation  by  an  unnumerical  multiplicity 76 

III.  Is  Conceptual  Time  Identical  WITH  Space? 78 

1.  If  only  one  form  of  homogeneity  is  possible 79 

2.  And  if  space  is  that  form 81 

C.  The  Relation  of  Bercson's  "Duree  Pure"  to  the  Timeless- 

ness OF  Eucki;n's  "  Geistesleben" 84 

I.    Its  Function  in  Perception 84 

II.    Pure  Memory  AND  the  "  Geistige  Gegenwart" 85 

HI.    Succession  and  the  Consciousness  of  Succession 86 

rV.     Degrees  of  Duration  and  of  Timelessness 89 

V.     Relation  of  Spirit  to  Art 91 

VI.     Circumstantial  Considerations 92 

1.  Both  men  accused  of  dualism 

2.  Bergson  made  out  an  "eternalist"  by  opposing  writers 

3.  Relation  of  time  order  to  cause  and  effect 


ASPECTS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

The  vast  amount  of  discussion  that  has  centered,  in  modern  thought, 
around  the  idea  of  evolution  and  development,  has  almost  raised  anew 
the  whole  ancient  problem  of  the  nature  of  time  and  the  slightly  less 
ancient  one  of  its  relation  to  experience.  The  "Absolutist"  is  sure 
there  is  nothing  in  his  view  of  the  world  that  is  in  any  way  inconsistent 
with  the  fact  of  development  in  the  concrete  realm  of  phenomena;  the 
"Evolutionist"  is  equally  sure  that  the  Absolutist  denies  in  one  breath 
what  he  affirms  in  the  next.  The  Absolutist  insists  that  to  regard 
change  and  development  as  ultimate  makes  the  very  conception  of  such 
a  thing  impossible  and  absurd;  the  Evolutionist  replies  that  to  refuse 
to  do  so  is  to  stamp  the  whole  vast  fact  as  illusion  and  sham.  This  debate 
may  safely  be  regarded  as  the  central  interest  in  present  philosophical 
discussion. 

Professor  Windelband  has  summed  up  the  essential  effort  of  Greek 
philosophy  as  the  search  for  M'hat  is  changeless.  The  cause  of  change 
and  flux  must  be,  in  the  last  analysis,  it  seemed,  a  changeless  ground; 
and  to  find  this  ground  of  things — whether  by  slow  process  of  inference 
or  by  happy  guess — is  the  ruling  problem  of  ancient  thought.  Of  course, 
it  turns  out  to  be  a  difficult  logical  exercise  to  deduce  change  from  prem- 
ises that  do  not  contain  it,  or  vice  versa;  and  so  it  generally  transpires  that 
either  change  or  permanence  must  be  condemned  in  toto  as  illusion. 
But  however  intimately  time  and  change  may  be  related,  it  is  evident- 
that  the  problem  in  this  simple  form  scarcely  touches  the  question  of 
the  nature  of  time,  since  both  sides  assume  it  as  real  without  inquiring 
the  conditions  of  its  being  so.  Temporal  change  and  temporal  change- 
lessness  are  each  essentially  temporal  affairs,  and  the  Eleatics,  quite  as 
much  as  the  Heracleitics,  assume  the  reality  of  time.  Of  course,  the  change 
that  is  involved  in  time  itself  (change  of  future  to  past,  etc.)  is  .real 
change;  but  this  the  Eleatics,  with  all  their  passion  for  changelessness, 
did  not  think  to  deny, — and  for  the  good  reason,  too,  that  their  very 
conception  of  changelessness  implied  that  minimum  amount  of  change! 
They  opposed  a  succession  of  similar  moments  to  a  succession  of  dis- 
similar ones,  and  this  says  nothing  of  the  nature  of  succession  itself. 

Plato^  and  Aristotle  approach  nearest  to  the  modern  problem.  The 
former  became,  in  his  later  philosophy,  a  little  suspicious  of  his  owti 

*  Timaeus,  pp.  37-39;  Parmenides,  pp.  141,  152  f.;  Laws,  676;  Republic,  x,  608; 
Phacdo,  107  (Jowett  Tr.). 


O  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

earlier  attempts  to  get  change  into  the  world  of  things  through  the  simple 
participation  of  empty  space  in  the  changeless  Ideas,  and  provided  his 
Demiurge  to  facilitate  the  difficult  transition.  But  even  here  the  princi- 
ples of  change  and  changelessness  are  given  no  essentially  new  form. 
To  be  sure,  he  condemns  the  world  of  "time"  as  inferior  and  unreal, 
but  the  "eternal"  world  with  which  he  contrasts  it  is  still  a  realm  of 
temporal  changelessness, — not  a  "timeless"  existence  in  the  modern 
sense  of  the  word.  In  some  translations  at  least  he  is  even  made  to 
speak  of  his  world  of  Ideas  as  "timeless,"  but  there  is  no  obvious  reason 
in  the  context,  nor  in  the  whole  general  drift  of  his  thought,  to  regard 
this  as  anything  essentially  different  from  the  older  Eleatic  temporal 
identity. 

Aristotle^  narrowly  escapes  the  modern  problem.  Change  and  move- 
ment he  understands  as  characteristic  of  imperfertion.  In  the  struggle 
of  matter  to  realize  form  there  is  change  and  all  that  it  implies.  But 
in  the  highest  heaven  there  is  only  form,  pure  and  changeless,  and  this 
eternal  principle  gives  reality  to  the  lower  world.  So,  as  Professor 
Bergson^  has  remarked,  the  pure  form  of  Aristotle's  philosophy  is  related 
to  the  material  world  as  eternity  is  related  to  time.  But  so  far  all  this 
theory  of  the  eternal  may  still  be  interpreted  simply  as  temporal  lack 
of  change, — just  as  in  the  case  of  Plato.  But  once  at  least  Aristotle 
becomes  dissatisfied  with  this  simple  alternative.  He  suggests  that 
change  and  movement  are  not  enough  to  make  the  reality  of  time, — 
that  before  time  can  be  real  the  change  must  be  "nombre"  and  this 
implies  consciousness!  In  which  case  there  could  be  no  such  thing  as 
time,  if  the  soul  did  not  exist.  This,  he  considered,  did  not  make  time 
absolutely  relative  since  the  soul  possessed  necessary  reality.  But  his 
suggestion  does  contain  the  conception  that  time  is  relative  to  con- 
sciousness. Unfortunately,  however,  he  did  not  follow  out  the  idea  to 
its  consequences  and  so,  however  great  may  be  the  charm  of  finding 
the  beginnings  of  everything  in  Greece,  we  must  still  admit  that  Aristotle 
was  not  a  Kantian  transcendentalist ! 

From  Aristotle  to  modern  times,  perhaps  even  to  Hume  and  Kant, 
there  occurred  no  systematic  development  of  the  time  problem.  One 
finds  many  brilliant  isolated  conceptions  but  little  tendency  to  emphasize 
them,  even  on  the  part  of  the  philosophers  themselves  from  whom  they 

^  Physics,  iv,  ii,  14,  etc.     Metaphysics,  p.  309 ff.  (McMahon's  Tr.). 
'  L.  Constant,  Cotirs  de  M.  Bergson  sur  Vhisloire  de  I'idee  de  Temps,  Revue  de  Phi- 
losophie.     Jan.  1904 


ASPECTS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM  7 

came.  The  Christian  conception  of  eternal  life  in  the  future  involves 
no  new  concept  of  time  as  such.  Indeed,  the  very  fact  that  it  is  located 
in  the  future,  shows  how  far  it  is  removed  from  a  conception  of  timeless 
presence.  (Cf.,  however,  an  article  by  Mr.  McTaggert^  in  Mind  for 
1909,  on  the  claim  that  real  timelessness  may  properly  be  regarded  as 
past  or  future!)  And,  of  course,  the  chief  concern  of  the  middle  age  was 
with  this  very  world  view,  so  that  the  philosophy  of  the  whole  period 
makes  the  same  general  assumption  of  the  ultimate  fact  of  time  that 
characterized  the  Christian  and  Greek  conceptions.  Of  the  isolated 
individual  conceptions  we  need  notice  only  a  few  of  the  more  important. 

In  Plotinus  there  is  the  same  sort  of  vagueness  and  ambiguity  that 
one  learns  to  expect  from  mystics  in  general.  To  be  sure  he  looked  up 
to  an  intense  ecstatic  state  of  unity  with  the  Ultimate  as  the  completest 
state  of  existence  possible  to  man,  and  in  this  sort  of  experience  particular 
relations  of  time  and  place  tend  to  melt  away.  And,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  content  of  this  higher  life  spreads  its  details  out  in  time.  But  in 
spite  of  this  terminology,  I  doubt  that  it  can  at  all  be  interpreted  as  a 
theory  of  timelessness.  (1)  Of  course,  time  as  such  is  not  real  for 
consciousness  in  such  a  state  of  mind;  but  then  no  particular  thing 
whatever  is  at  that  time  real  as  distinguished  from  other  things,  because 
there  is  no  distinguishing  activity  going  on  there.  Time  is  no  exception 
to  this  rule,  but  neither,  on  the  other  hand,  is  it  a  distinct  problem. 
So  to  say  that  Plotinus  considered  time  as  merely  a  phenomenal  relation- 
ship would  be  like  saying  that,  since  Thales  regarded  everything  as  made 
of  water,  he  must  have  regarded  space  and  time  as  aqueous  entities!'' 
And  (2)  the  god  of  Plotinus  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  the  Ideal 
World  of  Plato,  the  eternity  of  which  we  have  already  construed  as 
really  only  infinite  time  in  a  world  where  change  is  forbidden.  Plotinus, 
if  this  be  true,  does  not  progress  so  far  as  Aristotle  toward  a  really  ideal- 
istic view  of  time. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  St.  Augustine''  saw  distinctly  the  great 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  a  systematic  view  of  time.  Here  for  the  first 
time  appear  many  of  the  haunting  paradoxes  in  which  subsequent 
philosophy  has  found  it  such  a  pleasure  to  revel  and  which,  too,  it  has 
taken  a  century  or  so  of  modern  thought  to  dispel.  The  fact  that  a 
temporal  world  cannot  exist  in  a  durationless  present  is  itself,  if  taken 

*  Art.,  Relation  of  Time  and  Eternity. 

'  Cf.,  however,  the  article  D}^  Henry  Sturt,  in  Vol.  25  of  the  Encyclopedia  Brilannka, 
on  Space  and  Time. 

'  Confessions,  Book  xi,  Ch.  14,  15,  16. 


5  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

seriously,  a  final  blow  to  any  mechanical  or  mathematical  view  of  time. 
This,  evidently,  Augustine  saw  very  plainly,  although  he  did  not  go  far 
toward  a  solution.  The  world  was  not  rescued  from  the  danger  of 
annihilation  with  which  a  geometrical  present  threatened  it  until,  in 
modern  times,  time  was  made  a  derivative  of  consciousness.  This 
procedure  Augustine  anticipated  at  least  to  the  extent  of  seeking  in 
psychic  phenomena  a  solution  for  his  difficulties.  It  does  not  seem  to 
have  occurred  to  him  to  ask  what  sort  of  existence  he  would  have,  in 
that  case,  to  attribute  to  consciousness  itself.  And  this,  of  course, 
would  have  to  be  included  in  any  complete  view  of  time. 

With  the  beginnings  of  modern  thought  we  find  a  growing  suspicion, 
even  among  the  Neo-Platonists,''  that  the  bare,  abstract  identities  of 
Plato  are  powerless  to  supply  real  change  and  process.  Bruno  and 
Nicolas  de  Cusa  look  to  the  principle  of  vitality  to  carry  over  from 
one  event  to  another.  The  world  is  a  living  being  and  so,  like  us,  can 
grow  and  grow  older.  Kepler  escapes  the  identities  of  the  Greeks  in  a 
doctrine  of  active  force;  and  Bendetti,  according  to  Bergson,  showed, 
as  against  Aristotle,  that  the  idea  of  movement  is  no  longer  absurd,  if 
one  agrees  to  the  existence  of  an  inner  life  through  change.  In  all  this 
there  is  the  tendency  to  appeal  to  one's  own  inner  experience  to  settle 
the  problem  of  the  outer  world, — the  tendency  that  has  been  so  charac- 
teristic of  modern  thought.  But  it  is  also  evident  that  these  early 
attempts  touch  upon  the  time  problem  only  indirectly  through  that  of 
causality  and  change.  But  even  that  is  enough  to  make  their  contri- 
bution  noteworthy. 

Descartes^  stands  at  the  turn  in  the  road.  His  physics  of  the  outer 
world  is  essentially  Greek.  It  is  systematic  and  clear-cut.  His  dealing 
with  consciousness  is  original  and  empirical.  This  finds  complete 
expression  in  his  hopeless  dualism  of  mind  and  matter.  Unfortunately 
for  the  development  of  our  problem,  time  fell,  in  his  opinion,  wholly  on  the 
side  of  extension  rather  than  on  that  of  thought.  He  therefore  regarded 
it  as  essentially  equivalent  to  the  movement  and  change  of  that  outer 
world.  Most  of  his  followers  developed  this  phase  of  his  philosophy 
at  the  expense  of  his  more  dynamic  conception  of  the  world  of  con- 
sciousness, which  might  have  been  more  fruitful.  And  there  has  been 
no  lack  in  recent  years  of  philosophers  who,  in  a  similar  way,  identify 
time  with  change  and  movement.     Whether  such  an  identification  can 

^  Cf.  above,  Constant's  report  on  Bergson. 

*  Oeuvres,  Vol.  iii,  pp.  97-99,  Letter  to  Vatier,  Nov.  1643. 


ASPECTS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM  9 

be  successfully  carried  through  is  a  different  matter, — one  which  can 
hardly  be  discussed  here. 

Spinoza's''  abstract  logical  world  would  have  admitted  beautifully 
of  interpretation  in  terms  of  ultimate  timelessness,  but  if  he  ever  explic- 
itly held  that  conception  he  did  not  work  out  at  any  length  its  relation 
to  consciousness  or  the  world.  To  be  sure  there  would  be  no  change 
in  the  simple  logical  interdependence  of  the  elements  of  his  world,  but 
this  was  also  true  of  the  ideal  world  of  Plato.  And  mere  lack  of  change 
in  things  is  by  no  means  synonymous  with  a  transcendence  of  time 
relations.  And  if  Spinoza  came  within  sight  of  the  latter  it  was  soon 
lost  to  view  in  his  supreme  effort  to  overcome  Descartes'  dualism. 

But  Leibnitz^"  took  the  question  more  seriously  and  drew  some 
conclusions  of  his  own.  With  him  the  outer,  merely  mechanical  world 
of  Descartes  disappears  and  all  reality  is  regarded  as  having  innerness, — 
if  not  always  consciousness,  at  least  something  analogous  to  it.  And 
time  turns  out,  even  in  his  world  of  preestablished  harmony  and  devel- 
opment, to  depend  upon  the  finitude  of  knowing  subjects  whose  range  is 
limited.  For  the  Monad  of  monads  who  can  see  the  whole  infinite 
connection  of  things  at  once,  there  is  no  final  or  existential  development. 
It  is  evident  that  this,  if  carried  out  to  its  ultimate  consequences,  ap- 
proaches very  closely  to  Kant's  conception  of  the  transcendent  character 
of  the  ego, — so  far,  of  course,  as  time  is  concerned.  Otherwise  there  are 
fundamental  differences  that  almost  obscure  what  similarity  there  is 
between  the  two  theories.  And  on  the  other  hand,  perhaps  this  very 
similarity  in  their  views  of  time  as  relative  to  consciousness  is  partly  to 
be  accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  through  Wolff,  Kant  was  early  brought 
under  the  influence  of  Leibnitz.  And  we  must  also  notice  that  this 
same  brief  suggestion  of  Leibnitz  anticipates  the  whole  conception  of 
the  psychological  present  as  it  has  been  worked  out  in  recent  thought, — 
especially  by  Professor  James  and  Professor  Royce. 

The  mechanical  side  of  Descartes'  theory  reached,  perhaps,  its  most 
famous  expression  in  the  work  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,"  and  to  a  less  degree 
his  predecessor  Clark.  Newton  accepted  the  theory  or  concept  of 
time  as  a  simple  phase  of  the  outer,  mechanical  order, — a  sort  of  continu- 
um existing  in  its  own  right  and  moving  at  a  perfectly  constant  velocity. 
All  our  measurements  of  time  are  ultimately  measurements  of  move- 

^  Spinoza,  Meta.  Cog.,  C.  4  and  Elhica,  pp.  2,  270-276. 

"  Works  of  L.  (Duncan's  Tr.),  p.  244  ff.  and  Russell,  Phil,  of  Leibnitz,  pp.  127-130. 

"  Priniipia,  Ed.  1714,  pp.  5,  7,  etc. 


10  SOME  VIEWS  or  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

ment,  but  time  is  the  independent  variable.  It  is  only  with  reference 
to  the  constancy  of  the  time  flow  that  movement  itself  can  be  called 
uniform  or  irregular.  Time  is  thus  independent  both  of  consciousness 
and  of  the  varying  changes  of  tilings.  In  short,  we  have  in  this  theory  the 
mechanical,  geometrical  conception  with  a  vengeance.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Newton's  interest  was  primarily 
in  physical  science  where,  at  present  at  least,  one  deals  explicitly  in 
abstractions.  Newton's  conception  is  essentially  that  of  the  infinitesmal 
calculus,  and  must  always  remain  the  working  assumption  of  abstract 
mathematics.  But  in  order  that  the  mathematics  shall  be  true  one 
does  not  need  to  assume  the  absolute  existence  of  this  abstract  time  any 
more  than  of  logarithms  or  differentials. 

Hume's^^  dismal  failure  to  derive  the  concept  of  time  from  simple 
"impressions"  is  too  familiar  to  need  discussion.  It  is  important  in  the 
history  of  thought,  along  with  some  other  theories  of  Hume's  chiefly  in 
that  it  may  have  helped  to  awaken  Immanuel  Kant^^  from  his  "dogmatic 
C.  slumber"  and  so  led  to  his  revolutionary  conception  of  the  absolute 
C  relativity  of  time  to  the  synthetic  function  of  consciousness.  And  this 
latter  theory  has  so  dominated  the  philosophy  of  the  last  century  that 
any  adequate  mention  of  its  multitudinous  phases  would  be  quite  out 
of  the  question  here.  In  Germany  especially,  apart  from  a  certain 
semi-popular  "left  wing"  now  more  or  less  rapidly  disappearing,  Kant's 
Kritik  has  remained  the  one  supreme  classic.  One  of  the  most  remark- 
able things  about  the  Heidelberg  Congress  a  few  years  ago  was  its  revela- 
tion of  the  great  strength  of  the  present  Neo-Kantian  tendency.  And  if, 
outside  of  Germany,  respect  for  the  classical  tradition  is  not  so  strong, 
this  much  at  least  is  true,  that  the  problem  has  remained  in  about  the 
form  in  which  he  stated  it,  however  widely  solutions  may  differ.  When 
it  is  clearly  seen  that  the  idea  of  time  is  neither  a  sensation  nor  a  com- 
bination of  sensations,  we  are  facing  it  from  the  direction  of  Kant's 
Kritik,  whether  we  accept  his  complete  table  of  categories  or  not.  We 
shall,  therefore,  consider  that  with  him  we  have  reached  the  modern 
statement  of  the  problem. 

It  was  indicated  at  the  beginning  of  this  review  that  the  notion  of 
evolution  that  has  so  powerfully  dominated  the  past  half-century,  has 
set  the  time  problem  in  the  very  foreground.  Now  it  is  interesting  to 
notice  in  connection  with  what  we  have  said  of  Kant  that  he  himself  was 

'*  Treatise,  pp.  26-68. 

"  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  pp.  24-33  (IMullcr's  Tr.). 


ASPECTS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM  11 

a  pioneer  in  evolution  theory.  His  vision  was  not  limited  to  the  scholas- 
tic cosmology  that  embraced  something  over  six  thousand  years.  Long 
before  Laplace,  Kant  caught  sight  of  the  endless  stellar  past,  and  saw  the 
solar  system  develop  from  a  swirl  of  nebulae.  Kant  then,  at  any  rate, 
did  not  regard  a  cosmic  evolution  as  at  all  inconsistent  with  his  epis- 
temological  theory  that  time  is  a  product  of  the  synthetic  unity  of  apper- 
ception. And  with  this  the  question  at  once  presents  itself.  How  are  we 
to  look  upon  this  implied  division  of  labor  between  science  and  philosophy, 
when  they  come  so  near  dealing  with  the  same  problem? 


The  effort  to  distinguish  clearly  between  the  philosophical  and  the 
scientific  problem,  and  to  understand  the  relation  between  the  two, 
is  a  strictly  modern  product.     The  earlier  Greeks  thought  nothing  of 
having  a  cosmological  theory  that  was  in  fiat  contradiction  to  their 
metaphysis.     The  former  was  "opinion";   it  was  inductive,  realistic, 
concrete,  sensory:  the  latter  was  "truth";  it  was  deductive,  rational. 
The  cosmology  could  be  understood  by  anybody;  the  real  truth  only  by 
the  initiated.     Even  Parmenides  had  highly  complex  teachings  as  to 
the  movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies;  on  the  other  hand  he  was  perfectly 
certain  from  a  "rational"  standpoint  that  motion  was  quite  impossible. 
And  if  many  people  even  today  seem  to  have  analogous  water-tight 
compartments  in  their  minds,  we  shall  probably  have  to  admit  that  it  is 
a  more  sophisticated  distinction,  not  a  naive  one.     But  we  have  not 
yet  told  the  whole  story.     Not  only  did  the  ancient  and  medieval  thinkers 
entertain  at  the  same  time  a  priori  " truth "  and  scientific  "opinion," 
but  they  complicated  matters  generally  by  the  introduction  of  an  a  priori 
science  which  therefore  occupied  a  sort  of  intermediate  position  so  far 
as  subject-matter  and  general  validity  was  concerned.     It  was  in  this 
a  priori  science,  however,  that  the  evolution  theory  in  modern  times 
arose."    On  the  side  of  "pure"  philosophical  thought  there  had  been, 
since  the  time  of  Plato,  no  room  for  talk  of  ontological  development; 
the  orthodox  thinkers  were  bound  by  the  whole  movement  of  history  to 
deny  that  change  could  be  ultimate.     But,  it  seems,  from  every  other 
manner  of  man  there  came  now  and  then  suggestions  of  world  develop- 
ment of  a  more  or  less  definite  sort,  which  found  expression  in  Astronomy, 
Botany,  Biology,  etc.,  as  well  as  in  philosophies  such  as  that  of  Leibnitz 
mentioned  above. 

"  Cf.  Osborn,  From  the  Greeks  to  Darwin. 


12  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

It  was  not  until  the  year  1859  that  empirical  science  came  forth  with 
a  clear-cut  hypothesis  of  evolution  and,  along  with  that,  a  good  supply 
of  evidence  to  base  it  on;  it  was  in  this  year  that  Darwin  published  his 
masterpiece.  Until  there  was  evidence  of  the  fact  of  evolution,  it  mooted 
little  for  the  enthusiasts  of  the  closet  to  cry  their  evolutionary  wares; 
on  the  other  side  the  conservatives  of  the  cloister  displayed  an  equally 
a  priori  array  of  fixities  and  immutables,  neither  competitor  making  a 
visible  attempt  to  weight  his  airy  productions  with  the  concrete  value  of 
established  fact.  A  few  decades  before  the  time  of  Darwin,  however, 
the  method  of  inductive  science  began  to  make  an  impression  on  the 
exterior  of  this  ancient  problem, — but  on  the  exterior  only.  The  facts 
(the  observable  positions  and  motions  of  the  bodies  of  the  solar  system) 
admitted  easily  of  such  a  genetic  explanation,  but  the  genesis,  the  progress, 
did  not  show  up  in  the  facts  themselves.  Lamarck  and  Laplace  con- 
tributed facts  and  suggestions  for  explaining  them, — chiefly,  however, 
suggestions.  But  it  was  left  to  Darwin,  through  his  prodigious  capacity 
for  patient  investigation,  to  set  forth  in  an  orderly  and  systematized 
manner  all  the  facts  that  were  literally  obtainable  in  his  day,  and  suggest 
in  outline  the  history  of  a  measureless  past  as  he  read  it  in  the  organiza- 
tion, habits,  structure,  and  embryonic  development  of  living  individuals 
and  in  the  stratified  archives  of  rock.  Here  was  material  that  needed 
only  arrangement  and  it  would  tell  its  own  story;  and  to  Darwin  belongs 
the  credit,  not  only  of  bringing  to  light  vastly  more  of  this  material  than 
had  been  accumulated  in  the  centuries  that  preceded  him,  but  also  of 
arranging  it  in  a  simple  and  convincing  scheme. 

As  a  bare  matter  of  history  the  world  has  thought  so  well  of  this 
work  that  at  present  to  be  familiar  with  its  main  outlines  is  a  requisite 
of  even  an  ordinary  education.  And  more  than  that,  the  idea  of  devel- 
opment has  become,  to  a  very  large  extent,  the  organizing  principle  of 
the  whole  field  of  natural  science,  including  even  psychology  and  the 
sociological  side  of  ethics.  The  complete  scientific  explanation  of  any 
fact  must  include  an  account  of  its  origin. 

Now  it  is  impossible  that  so  sweeping  a  change  as  this  in  the  field 
of  natural  science  should  be  a  matter  of  indifference  to  philosophy. 
Many  of  the  cardinal  conceptions  of  the  established  philosophy  had  their 
rise  centuries  before  scientific  evolution  was  dreamed  of,  and  might  easily 
be  quite  inconsistent  with  the  new  way  of  regarding  things.  No  literate 
person  seriously  questions  any  longer  the  general  truth  of  scientific 
evolution.  That  is  accepted;  and  if  any  of  the  conclusions  of  philosophy 
are  inconsistent  with  it,  so  much  the  worse  for  them.     The  question 


if- 


ASPECTS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM  13 

is  no  longer,  "Is  development  a  fact?",  but  rather  "How  are  we  to  under- 
stand the  fact  of  development?"  Obviously  the  same  thing  cannot  be 
true  in  science  and  false  in  philosophy;  a  science  of  change  cannot  associate 
on  equal  terms  with  a  philosophy  of  fixity  and  temporal  changelessness. 
If  such  contradiction  exist,  it  is  probably  on  the  side  of  philosophy 
that  rearrangement  will  have  to  be  made.  And  it  is  further  evident 
that  if  there  is  to  be  any  readjustment  of  first  principles,  this  will  con- 
cern very  vitally  the  ancient  problem  of  change  and  time.  Any  altera- 
tion in  the  status  of  one  of  these  involves  a  corresponding  alteration  in 
the  status  of  the  other,  since  the  two  conceptions  are  bound  to  be  inter- 
dependent. 

First,  then,  a  word  or  so  about  change  and  its  relation  to  the  present 
problem.  The  time  has  passed,  even  in  the  realm  of  philosophy,  when 
a  solution  could  be  accepted  that  amounted  to  a  denial  of  the  facts. 
It  does  not  seem  to  have  disturbed  the  Eleatics  that  their  solution  of  the 
problem  of  change  and  identity  flatly  contradicted  the  very  facts  on 
which  the  problem  itself  was  based.  It  only  convinced  them  that 
there  was  something  wrong  with  the  world,  not  with  their  argument. 
The  Christian  Science  method  of  disposing  of  the  problem  of  evil  is 
about  the  only  overt  modern  parallel  to  this  sort  of  logic.  The  former 
concluded  that  change  is  an  illusion  just  as  the  latter  insists  that  pain 
and  evil  are  lies.     The  logic  is  essentially  the  same. 

But  while  the  ordinary  scientist  would  laugh  at  this  naivete,  still  there 
is  a  sense  in  which  scientific  theory  is  always  on  the  verge  of  a  kind  of 
Eleaticism.  Ever  since  the  time  of  Empedocles  there  have  been  periodic 
attempts  to  relegate  change  to  "relations"  and  to  hold  that  the  ultimately 
real  things, — atoms,  corpuscles,  electrons,  ether — are  changeless  and 
eternal.  Each  ultimate  particle,  according  to  these  scientists  who  have 
mistaken  a  working  hypothesis  for  a  metaphysical  theory,  turns  out  to 
be  the  ancient  Eleatic  "Being"  in  miniature, — the  main  difference 
being  that  they  have  multiplied  this  abstract  ghost  of  reality  by  an 
inconceivable  number  instead  of  contenting  themselves  with  one  as 
Parmenides  did.^*  The  utter  hopelessness  of  such  an  alternative  is 
evident  when  we  consider  (a)  that  there  cannot  be  change  between 
things  that  is  not  somehow  accounted  for  by  change  in  things,  and 
(b)  that  the  relations  themselves  must  be  regarded  as  real — at  least 
as  real  as  the  change  which  they  embody,  and,  if  we  press  the  matter  a 
little,  they  even  threaten,  as  over  against  a  horde  of  indiscernible  "cores" 

"  Cf.  Karl  Pearson,  Grammar  of  Science. 


14  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

of  changeless  being,  to  usurp  all  the  reality  in  sight.^^  This  is  logically, 
if  not  historically,  the  end  of  the  matter.  Strictly  modern  science  has 
come  pretty  generally  to  realize  that  its  proper  field  is  a  dynamic  one; 
the  reality  with  which  it  deals  is  a  reaUty  of  action  and  interaction; 
its  laws  are  laws  of  change.  It  would  be  more  or  less  absurd  to  make 
evolution  its  central  conception,  and  at  the  same  time  insist  that  change 
itself  was  only  a  surface  phenomenon  which  did  not  penetrate  into  the 
reality  of  things.  Modern  science,  at  any  rate,  has  no  further  use  for 
the  changeless  core  of  being  that  some  of  our  ancestors  had  such  respect 
for.  Things  change  through  and  through  if  they  change  at  all ;  the  change 
in  things  is  just  as  real  as  the  things  themselves. 

Nor  has  philosophy  any  particular  prerogative  by  which  it  may 
hold  to  a  changeless  substrate  through  change  while  that  alternative  is 
denied  to  science.  As  a  modern  writer  has  said,  it  has  been  the  custom 
of  philosophers  in  the  past  "to  pronounce  holy  ban  upon  change"; 
it  is  stamped  as  appearance,  although  it  be  appearance  in  which  nothing 
appears;  it  is  regarded  as  phenomenal  and  contrasted  with  changeless 
noumena,  altogether  to  the  advantage  of  the  latter.  But  the  remarks 
made  above  apply  with  equal  force  here.  The  appearances  of  things 
do  not  change  unless  the  things  themselves  change  also,  and  philosophy 
can  have  no  more  use  for  changeless  noumena  than  science  for  change- 
less atoms. 

Of  course,  philosophy  would  face  the  problem  of  change  and  time 
whether  evolution  were  a  fact  or  not.  Indeed  evolution,  so  far  as  it  is  an 
empirical  law,  only  presents  the  old  problem  of  time  and  change  in  a 
shghtly  altered  and  greatly  exaggerated  form.  The  staggering  vastness 
of  time  and  space  as  they  are  understood  by  the  modern  geologist  and 
astronomer  would  indeed  cause  Plato  or  Aristotle  to  hold  his  breath; 
but  all  this  appears  to  affect  the  situation  for  philosophy  chiefly  (a)  in 
giving  it  immensely  more  time  and  change  to  think  about,  and  (b)  in 
making  the  call  for  a  solution  much  more  urgent.  For  science  it  is  a 
matter  of  great  importance  which  details  in  a  certain  series  come  first, 
and  the  exact  relation  in  which  each  stands  to  all  the  rest.  But  phi- 
losophy can  deal  with  the  problem  only  in  a  general  way.  Its  problem 
is  not  what  particular  changes  take  place,  nor  how  many  there  are  of  them, 
but  rather  how  change  in  general  is  to  be  understood;  it  is  not  the  details 
of  the  process,  but  the  ultimate  meaning  and  reality  of  process  that  it 
seeks  to  determine.     If  a  person  understands  the  process  of  arithmetical 

i«  Cf.  Borden  P.  Bowne,  Metaphysics,  Ch.  ii  and  iii. 


ASPECTS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEMS  15 

division,  it  is  a  matter  of  logical  indifference  whether  the  dividend  con- 
tains six  digits  or  six  million  of  them.  The  rule  that  completely  explains 
the  one  operation  just  as  completely  explains  the  other.  And  precisely 
the  same  is  true  of  the  philosophical  rationale  of  this  problem  of  change. 
If  the  reality  of  a  present  changing  thing  can  be  satisfactorily  construed 
in  logical  terms,  it  is  a  matter  of  small  rational  import  whether  the 
series  of  changes  be  exhausted  in  the  present  hour  or  sweep  across  an 
infinity  of  time.  And  so  the  problem  faces  anyone  who  has  an  ambition 
to  form  a  consistent  view  of  the  world,  not  "Is  change  real?"  but  "^\Tiat 
sort  of  reality  does  it  have?" — "How  am  I  to  organize  the  idea  of  change 
into  my  general  view?'' 

The  fact  that  change  is  accepted  as  real  does  not  solve  this  problem. 
To  say  that  it  is  real  is  not  the  same  as  to  say  that  it  is  absolute,  although, 
of  course,  it  is  consistent  with  such  a  view.  The  Universe,  as  Professor 
James  said,  may  be  "more  than  one  story  deep";  that  question  is  not 
preemted  by  settling  the  scientific  problem.  An  illustration,  perhaps, 
may  help  us  here.  Suppose  we  imagine  ourselves  back  in  the  midst  of 
the  reahst-nominalist  debate  that  once  shook  philosophical  Europe  so 
profoundly,  and  let  us  raise  the  question  whether  there  are  really  uni- 
versal ideas.  Bishop  Berkeley  takes  the  position  that  we  really  have  no 
general  idea  of  triangle, — only  a  word  and  an  image  of  some  particular 
triangle  to  which  the  word,  for  the  time  being,  attaches  itself.  Now 
there  are  a  great  variety  of  positions  that  a  person  might  take  in  opposi- 
tion to  this  radical  nominalism.  For  instance,  (1)  he  might  hold  simply 
that,  in  consciousness,  there  does  exist  the  general  meaning  "triangu- 
larity" which  is  not  the  same  as  a  specific  image,  even  though  it  might 
always  be  accompanied  by  one.  It  is  strictly  a  sense  of  general  truth, 
a  consciousness  of  the  characterizing  mark  of  all  triangles.  Or  (2)  one 
might  hold  that  the  general  idea  "  triangle"  exists  as  a  sort  of  substance, — 
that  it  has  a  reality  independent  both  of  its  embodiment  in  particular 
triangles,  and  of  the  thinking  process  by  which  one  thinks  the  idea, 
i.  e.,  some  such  a  view  as  was  held  by  John  Scotus  Erigena.  Or  (3)  one 
might  conceivably  hold  that  the  consciousness  to  which  the  idea  is 
present,  is  itself  triangular.  Or,  to  carry  our  illustration  to  its  extreme 
limits,  one  might  hold  (4)  that  the  universe  is  triangular,  or  (5)  that 
it  is  primarily  a  triangle!  Of  course,  it  needs  no  argument  to  show 
the  wild  absurdity  of  these  last  hypotheses;  but  granted  that  nobody 
holds  such  views,  we  may  at  least  consider  them  as  verbal  possibilities, 
which  is  sufficient  for  our  present  purpose.     We  intend  only  to  insist 


16  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

that  "triangle"  might  be  real  in  one  sense  without  being  so  in  the  others. 
That  it  should  exist  as  an  idea  in  thought  is  not  the  same  as  that  the 
universe  should  be  triangular  nor  even  that  consciousness  should  be 
triangular.  And  it  is  also  evident  that,  while  the  first  alternative  makes 
it  real,  it  does  not  make  it  so  real  as  do  the  latter  ones.  In  a  sense 
every  detail  of  the  universe, — a  dream,  a  shadow,  a  forgotten  meaning — 
must  somehow  characterize  it.  The  reality  of  the  abstract  idea  of  triangle 
at  least  proves  that  the  universe  is  such  that  its  character  is  sufficient 
to  account  for  that  particular  fact.  However,  it  is  an  altogether  differ- 
ent matter,  and  it  makes  triangularity  infinitely  more  real,  too,  to  say 
that  the  universe  is  triangular! 

Now  the  same  thing  may  be  true  of  change.  To  deny  that  change 
is  an  illusion  is  at  least  not  necessarily  synonymous  with  the  affirmation 
that  the  universe  as  such  is  a  process  of  change.  This  question,  however, 
is  not  for  immediate  discussion.  It  concerns  us  only  indirectly  as  a 
correlate  of  the  time  puzzle  and  so  must,  for  the  most  part,  be  treated 
only  by  inference.  But,  while  it  is  not  our  purpose  to  discuss  the  ques- 
tion in  any  thorough-going  way,  it  may  lead  to  more  comfortable  orien- 
tation, if  we  remind  ourselves  at  this  juncture  of  some  cardinal  reasons 
for  thinking  that  change  as  we  see  it  is  not  an  accidental  break  in  the 
calm  of  a  measureless  monotony,  but  is  a  very  real  and  important  aspect 
of  being. 

(1)  When  philosophers  set  out  to  define  what  is  meant  by  a  thing's 
being  real,  about  the  only  predicate  that  seems  available  for  the  purpose 
is  that  of  activity.  If  there  is  to  be  any  mark  to  distinguish  an  existent 
thing  from  pure  nothing,  that  mark  seems  to  be  energy,  activity.  A 
thing  which  never  made  itself  felt  in  the  world, — which  never  made  a 
difference  in  the  aspect  and  behavior  of  the  world  process,  would  be, 
so  far  as  that  process  is  concerned,  non-existent.  In  other  words,  a 
thing  is  not  actual  unless  it  acts  in  some  real  way;  and  activity  means 
change. 

(2)  In  the  next  place,  the  knowledge  function  is  itself  a  process. 
The  self  "appears"  to  be  in  a  process  of  change,  and  that,  by  an  argu- 
ment analogous  to  Descartes'  proof  of  its  reality,  is  exactly  the  same 
as  to  say  that  it  knows  itself  to  change.  This  simply  means  that  in 
the  self  change  is  as  real  as  knowledge,  and  it  is  obviously  absurd  for 
knowledge  to  pretend  to  get  back  of  itself.  Of  course,  change  is  not 
the  only  aspect  of  the  knowing  process.  It  involves  some  sort  of  identity 
as  well  as  some  sort  of  change, — an  identity  which,  in  its  relation  with 


ASPECTS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEMS  17 

change,  makes  possible  the  experience  of  continuity.  In  the  first  place, 
the  mere  fact  of  change  in  consciousness  implies  an  identity  of  some 
kind  in  the  existence  of  consciousness  (since  it  could  not  change  unless 
something  changed);  and  in  the  second  place,  the  consciousness  of 
change  implies  at  least  relatively  identical  ideas  in  terms  of  which  the 
change  is  known.  And  this  "relatively"  is  meant  in  a  perfectly  literal 
sense;  the  ideas  in  terms  of  which  we  know  change  are  just  as  "identical" 
as  our  experience  of  change  is  real,  since  it  is  only  as  opposed  to  the 
constancy  of  their  meanings  that  we  can  become  aware  of  change  at  all. 
But  it  is  evident  that  the  element  of  identity,  both  in  the  knowing 
subject  and  in  its  ideas,  instead  of  contradicting  change,  is  of  a  kind 
implied  by  the  very  fact  of  change  itself. 

(3)  The  object  as  well  as  the  subject  "appears"  to  change.  Now 
it  was  said  above  that  to  say  that  the  self  "appears  to  itself  to  change" 
is  precisely  the  same  as  to  say  that  it  knows  itself  to  change.  Can  the 
same  thing  be  said  of  this  second  proposition?  Professor  Ladd,  for 
instance,  holds  that  it  cannot.  Although  "cognitive  consciousness  of 
change  is  convertible  with  cognition  of  actual  change  when  the  self  is  re- 
garded as  object, "^^  yet  he  insists,  on  the  other  hand,  that  while  "things 
do  certainly  appear  to  me,  and  to  all  men,  very  frequently  and  somewhat 
indeiinitely  to  change,  I  cannot  immediately  convert  this  claim  into  an 
indubitable  proposition  that  things  do,  in  reality,  change."'^  This 
distinction  the  writer  finds  it  difficult  to  follow.  We  are  told  that  con- 
ceivably the  apparent  changes  in  the  object  might  be  due  to  "changes 
in  the  mental  point  of  view"  rather  than  to  real  changes  in  the  object 
as  it  is  in  itself.  But  this  assumes  that  it  would  be  possible  for  the 
object  to  change  some  of  its  relations  (at  least  its  relation  to  my  con- 
sciousness) without  such  change  in  relation  resulting  in,  or  involving, 
any  change  in  the  being  of  the  object.  But  do  relations  exist  and  change 
independently  of  things?  To  the  writer  it  seems  quite  incontestable 
that  if  one  means  literally  relations  of  the  things,  any  change  in  relations 
must  stand  for,  and  mean,  change  in  the  things  themselves. 

As  opposed  to  this,  however,  we  must  take  account  of  the  claim  of 
the  neo-realists  that  some  relations,  at  least,  are  "external"  and  so 
may  change  independently  of  things,  —  for  instance  spatial  relations. 
Perhaps  nobody  at  the  present  day  would  be  seriously  inclined  to  explain 
all   change  as  a  change  of   relations   merely,    of  things  in  themselves 

"  Ladd,  A  Theory  of  Reality,  p   145. 
'« Ibid.,  p.  145. 


18  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

changeless.  This  is  the  Uteral  impUcation  of  much  present-day  scien- 
tific hypothesis  but,  as  a  rule,  this  convenient  sort  of  mental  picturing  is 
not  presented  as  a  serious  metaphysic.  But,  now  and  then,  there  does 
come  this  claim  that  relations  can  change  without  corresponding  changes 
in  the  related  things  themselves,  and  this,  oddly  enough,  not  from 
"Absolutists"  who  are  presumably  interested  in  disclosing  static  reali- 
ties, but  from  those  who,  in  general,  are  determined  to  make  change 
absolutely  real!  Professor  James,  for  instance,  in  a  well-known  passage 
makes  fun  of  the  idea  that  "the-moon-as-looked-at-by-A"  should  be 
really  different  from  "the-moon-as-looked-at-by-B."^^  And  as  so 
stated  it  cannot  fail  to  be  a  good  argumentum  ad  populum.  The  man 
of  the  street  would  hardly  be  inclined  to  imagine  that  his  movements 
alter  the  equilibrium  of  the  universe!  But  when  the  claim  is  definitely 
set  up  in  philosophical  discussion  that  relations  of  things  can  change 
without  things  changing,  many  questions  and  misgivings  arise.  (1) 
How  much  change  of  relationship,  for  instance,  is  compatible  with 
changelessness  in  things?  Is  the  being  of  the  moon  also  independent 
of  the  presence  of  the  earth,  which  is  only  a  finite  multiple  of  myself  so 
far  as  spatial  property  is  concerned?  Surely  not  if  we  remember  that 
its  nearness  to  the  earth's  mass  has,  in  all  probability,  put  an  end  to  the 
rotation  of  the  moon  on  its  axis,  which,  in  turn,  helps  so  much  to  explain 
the  characteristic  features  of  our  stellar  neighbor.  The  moon  simply 
would  not  be  what  it  is  if  the  earth  were  absent,  and  in  that  case,  then, 
the  relation  of  the  moon  to  the  earth  is  not  an  "external"  one.  And 
now  if  it  be  replied  that  the  presence  of  the  above-mentioned  A  or  B 
does  not  obviously  affect  the  moon  at  all,  and  that  therefore  they  can 
change  their  relation  to  the  moon  without  the  being  of  the  moon  under- 
going any  change,  we  must  simply  regard  it  as  tantamount  to  the  denial 
of  the  validity  of  all  inference  that  goes  beyond  what  is  present  to  the 
senses. 

And  (2)  one  may  very  properly  inquire  if,  in  the  passage  quoted. 
Professor  James  really  means  by  the  word  "relationship"  what  the 
word  generally  means.  Let  us  suppose  that  x  stands  in  a  given  relation 
m  to  y,  but  that  it  makes  absolutely  no  difference  to  y.  In  what  con- 
ceivable way  would  it  differ  from  a  relation  m  between  x  and  z,  granted 
that  it,  too,  expressed  no  inner  character  of  z.  Or,  to  put  it  another  way, 
we  cannot  say  that  two  terms  and  the  relation  of  these  two  to  each  other, 
is  just  the  same  as  three  terms,  especially  when  the  very  definition  of 

"  James,  Some  Problems  of  Philosophy,  p.  89. 


ASPECTS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM  19 

relationship  must  consist  in  distinguishing  it  from  terms.  There  is 
something  unearthly  about  a  relation  that  is  thus  hypostasized  as  an 
independently  changing  existence  or  entity.  And  even  on  general 
principles  one  may  justly  hesitate  to  recognize  a  change  in  any  part 
of  a  related  system  that  claims  to  produce  no  change  at  all  in  the  other 
parts.  To  the  writer  it  inheres  in  the  very  notion  of  related  parts  that 
all  changes  should,  in  the  last  analysis,  be  reciprocal:  in  so  far  as  there  is 
system,  all  the  parts  would  be  affected  by  a  change  in  any  one  part,  and 
even  apart  from  this  notion  of  system  all  the  terms  actually  involved 
in  the  relation  should  be  affected  by  it  just  so  far  as  the  relation  as  such 
is  real. 

But  however  that  may  be,  we  are  certainly  ready  to  admit  with 
an  above-criticized  author  that  "Agnosticism,  whether  positive  or 
negative,  concerning  the  transsubjective  validity  of  the  category  of 
change  undermines  the  entire  fabric  of  human  knowledge."^"  It  is,  I 
suppose,  conceivable  that  all  reasoning  is  untrustworthy;  but  as  a  mat- 
ter of  practical  life  it  is  utterly  impossible  to  hold  a  view  of  which  the 
only  consistent  expression  is  absolute  silence  (although  it  would,  of 
course,  be  inconsistent  for  an  absolute  agnostic  to  recognize  the  claims 
of  consistency !) .  And  as  soon  as  one  departs  from  the  hopeless  tautology 
of  wholesale  doubt,  it  becomes  evident  that  a  knowledge  process  can 
stand  in  no  intelligible  relations  with  a  static  reality.  Knowledge 
is  not  a  mere  "having"  of  states;  it  is  not  a  succession  of  sensations 
and  their  copies, — of  "impressions  vivid  or  faint,"  as  Hume  would  have 
it;  it  is  not  a  series  of  externally  caused  mechanical  alterations  that 
consciousness  suffers  or  undergoes.  It  is  a  kind  of  activity,  an  actual 
fact  (literally  "f actus" — something  done),  not  the  mere  bump  of  an 
outer  stimulus  on  a  tabula  rasa.  This  is  about  the  only  modernly 
accepted  view  of  the  nature  of  the  knowledge  process,  and  one  which  for 
present  purposes  may  safely  be  assumed.  Now  it  is  plain  that  if  the 
real  world  is  a  series  of  things  of  which  the  only  determining  essence  is 
immutability,  then  the  process  of  knowledge  is,  by  its  very  nature,  at  utter 
parallax  with  that  world.  In  other  words,  a  knowledge  which  is,  as 
such,  dynamic  cannot  possibly  be  a  knowledge  of  a  static  world.  We 
conclude,  therefore,  that  the  validity  of  knowledge  implies  a  change 
that  is  just  as  real  as  the  concrete  objects  of  consciousness  themselves. 

The  purpose  of  the  foregoing  was  to  show  that  change  as  an  objective 
and  subjective  fact  belongs  to  the  very  essence  of  the  cosmic  order, 

"  Ladd,  A  Theory  of  Reality,  p.  148 


20  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

the  order  with  which  science  deals.  That  does  not  mean  that  it  is  the  only 
aspect  of  said  order  that  is  real,  nor  that  it  is  real  in  any  sense  in  which  some 
other  aspects  (as  for  instance,  space)  are  not  real.  It  cannot  be  illusion, 
even  if  it  may  possibly  not  be  the  final  word  about  reality.  The  world  of 
changeless  "cores"  either  of  the  ancient  or  modern  Eleatics  is  a  fiction 
of  the  imagination.  So  much  we  may  safely  take  for  granted.  Change 
in  the  objects  of  our  world  is  as  real  as  the  objects  themselves.  Of 
course,  on  the  other  hand,  a  predicate  true  for  the  parts  is  not  on  that 
account  true  for  the  whole.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  often  true  that  what 
holds  good  for  the  terms  of  a  series  is,  for  that  very  reason,  not  appHcable 
to  the  series  as  such.  But  then  something  is  gained  if  we  have  shown  that 
change,  in  the  world  of  things,  is  a  stubborn  fact  that  cannot  be  put  aside 
as  mere  seeming,  or  shelved  as  belonging  only  to  relationships.  Logically 
temporal  change  is  strictly  coordinate  with  temporal  fixity  or  change- 
lessness,  not  subordinate  to  it;  and  on  the  side  of  concrete  facts  it  seems 
overwhelmingly  to  predominate  over  this  logical  antithesis.  For  phil- 
osophy, then,  it  remains,  and  must  remain,  a  fact  of  first  importance. 

The  apology  for  this  long  introduction  may  by  this  time  be  apparent. 
Change  and  time,  we  might  almost  say,  are  converse  sides  of  the  same 
problem.  Each  in  some  sense  implies  the  other,  and  each  looks  ultimate 
when  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  other.  Change  implies  time, 
though  not  in  a  way  that  is  easy  to  state.  Change  is  not  mere  difference; 
nor  is  it  mere  difference  in  succession.  The  simple  fact  that  a  certain 
proposition  is  true  at  the  present  moment,  and  a  certain  other  true  at  a 
future  moment,  is  not  sufi&cient  to  determine  a  fact  of  change.  It  is 
not  necessarily  change  unless  the  two  mutually  exclusive  judgments 
concern  the  same  object  at  different  times.  This,  of  course,  does  not 
mean  that  a  part  of  the  object  remains  changeless.  Indeed,  if  it  did, 
we  should  have  to  say  that  our  predications  simply  did  not  refer  at  all 
to  that  part  of  the  object, — in  other  words,  that  it  was  really  not  a  part 
of  the  subject  of  our  judgments  at  all.  We  mean  simply  that  the  thing 
that  changes  must  have  sufficient  identity  in  the  two  successive  moments 
to  embody  the  two  successive  meanings  in  its  one  existence;  otherwise, 
^  we  have  difference  but  not  change.  Or,  as  we  have  said  before,  there  must 
^  be  something  thought  of  as  changing.  But  even  apart  from  the  question 
regarding  their  subjects,  it  is  at  least  evident  that  the  two  judgments, 
or  facts,  would  have  to  be  successive  in  order  for  change  to  mean  any- 
thing whatever,  and  the  essential  point  we  care  to  notice  here  is  that  the 
possibiUty  of  change  is  thus  logically  bound  up  with  the  equivalent 
reahty  of  time. 


ASPECTS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEMS  21 

And  now,  on  the  other  hand,  if  we  look  at  the  matter  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  concept  of  time,  there  are  equally  cogent  reasons  for  regarding 
change  as  a  presupposition  of  the  reality  of  time.  A  static  or  changeless 
time  Is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  The  time  relations  of  past,  present,  and 
future  are  by  their  very  nature  in  a  process  of  continual  change.  The 
present  is  no  longer  the  present,  if  in  it  the  relations  of  past  and  future 
congeal,  the  future  would  not  be  real  future  unless  its  distance  from 
the  present  were  constantly  decreasing.  The  present  is  primarily  the 
place  of  change  of  future  into  past,  and  without  this  qualification  it 
loses  completely  its  time  character.  Indeed  this  meaning  of  change 
which  seems  at  first  so  remote  and  abstract,  is  so  real  on  closer  inspection 
that  some  have  regarded  it  as  the  only  real  form  of  change.  Mr.  McTag- 
gert,2i  for  example,  insists  that  it  is  the  only  form  that  is  to  be  taken  as  a 
serious  problem,  which  conception  (even  if  Mr.  McTaggert  does  later 
decide  that  it  is  all  illusion!)  makes  this  change  of  time  relations  more 
fundamental  than  that  of  qualities  or  dynamic  relations,  where  people 
ordinarily  locate  the  essence  of  change.  But  we  do  not  need  to  adopt 
this  extreme  view  in  order  to  insist  that  time  implies  the  possibility, 
nay,  the  actuahty,  of  some  change.  This  is  the  exact  converse  of  the 
conclusion  of  the  preceding  paragraph,  and,  if  both  be  true,  then  it  is 
shown  that  time  and  change  are  so  intimately  related  that  they  pre- 
suppose each  other;  and  we  may  fairly  conclude  that  the  two  facts  in 
their  ultimate  being  are  correlative. 

But  not  identical!  One  of  the  most  fruitless  ways  of  dealing  with 
either  of  these  is  to  try  to  reduce  it  completely  to  terms  of  the  other. 
Consider,  by  way  of  illustration,  the  following  selections  from  an  article 
by  V.  Welby  on  Time  as  Derivative}'^  "There  is  no  such  thing  as  an 
ultimate  problem  of  Time,  nor  even  indeed  of  Space;  the  only  ultimate 
problem  for  us  in  this  connection  is  that  of  change."^^  And  again,  "I 
conceive  that  the  idea  of  time  has  arisen  because,  becoming  aware  of, 
or  realizing,  experience  in  its  aspect  as  a  sequence  of  change,  we  need 
to  measure  it.  Borrowing  a  space  idea  for  the  purpose,  we  measure  it 
as  a  line;  we  see  it  in  perspective.  The  'measure'  of  experience  thus 
gained  we  call  time."^^  And  once  more,  "Change,  then,  as  occurring 
in  space,  with  its  conditional  or  concomitant  motion,  seems  to  be  the 
central  or  original  experience Thus  through  Motion  and 

"  McTaggert,  Unreality  oj  Time,  Mind,  1908. 
«  V.  Welby,  Time  as  Derivative,  Mind,  1907. 
"  Ibid.,  p.  398. 
"  p.  393. 


22  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

as  the  functions  of  memory  and  expectation  develop,  we  ultimately 
translate  Change  into  Time,"^^  etc.  Perhaps  these  statements  are  not 
very  vividly  illuminating,  but  whatever  plausibiUty  they  may  have  will 
Serve  to  illustrate  the  point  we  have  above  aimed  at, — that  change 
and  time  imply  each  other.  It  is,  in  a  sense,  true  to  say  that  change 
plus  m.emory  and  expectation  produce  the  idea  of  time,  because  if  we  had 
the  sense  of  change  and  the  function  of  memory,  etc.,  we  would  indeed 
soon  have,  as  a  result,  the  idea  of  time.  But  the  haunting  misgivings 
the  ordinary  reader  has  after  following  such  a  deduction  are  due  to  the 
fact  that  it  would  work  quite  as  well  in  the  opposite  direction.  If  we 
had,  for  instance,  a  sense  of  duration  or  succession  plus  memory  and 
expectation  in  their  overt  form,  we  would  also  have  the  idea  of  change. 
Of  course,  time  without  some  change  is  impossible,  but  so  is  change 
without  a  before-and-after, — i.  e.,  without  time.  It  would  doubtless  be 
possible  to  prove  in  a  most  elaborate  way  that  convexity  is  only  a  phase 
of  concavity, — and  that  therefore  "the  only  ultimate  problem  for  us 

in  this  connection  is  that  of" concavity!     A  wonderful 

deliverance,  to  be  sure,  but  possessed  of  the  one  serious  fault  that  it 
does  not  get  anywhere. 

In  a  tone  similar  to  the  above  mentioned  article.  Professor  Liebmann 
insists  that  time  is  only  ultimately  change.  He  relates,-^  in  a  charming 
way,  the  ancient  legend  of  the  time  when  the  whole  world  stood  stock 
still  until  the  prince  should  come  to  waken  the  sleeping  princess,  and  adds 
that  could  such  an  absolute  cessation  of  all  motion  actually  occur  there 
would  be  no  such  thing  as  time  in  the  interval, — except,  of  course,  for 
some  onlooker  whose  vital  processes  were  still  going  on, — perhaps  in 
this  case  for  the  prince!  But  the  very  statement  itself  is  hopelessly 
circular.  What  would  an  interval  be  in  which  there  was  no  time? 
Possibly  something  like  an  opening  in  which  there  was  no  space!  Of 
course,  there  would  be  no  time  if  there  were  not  at  least  the  change  of 
future  into  past,  etc.;  but  then,  neither  would  there  be  any  interval.  I 
doubt  if  the  illustration  itself,  or  the  point  that  it  is  meant  to  illustrate, 
could  possibly  be  stated  in  a  way  that  would  in  the  least  conceal  the 
circle  that  inheres  in  it.  At  any  rate,  the  writers  we  have  here  taken  as 
examples  certainly  fail  to  do  so. 

For  our  present  purposes,  then,  we  shall  assume  without  further 
discussion  that  charige  and  time  are,  in  the  degree  of  their  reality,  strictly 
correlative.    This  does  not  mean  that  the  more  change  goes  on  the  more 

25  p.  396. 

'^  Zur  Analysis  der  Wirklichkdt ,  pp.  108-109. 


THE  RELAXniTV  Or  TIME  ^3 


time  passes  by,  but  that  to  just  the  extent  to  whici,  we  adm.t  the  reahty 
rchrnge  we  are  bound  to  admit  the  reahty  of  time,  and  v.ce  versa. 
This  necessity  we  shall  try  to  abide  by  in  the  discussion  that  follows. 
THE  RELATIVITY  OF  TIME 
Anyone  who  reads  this  is  familiar  with  the  old  paradox  co"cerning 
the  dubious  existence  of  time.    The  past  and  the  future  by  defmit^n 
do  not  exist;  only  the  present  is  real.     But  the  present   "-  -^^efoTe 
no  duration,  and  so  it,  taken  alone,  is  not  properly  time  at  all,  therefore 
ttae  does  not  exist.    And  I  suppose  that  one  might  just  as  well  add 
:Z  ste,  by  definition,  the  present  is  only  a  part  of  ttme^,  ,t  too  ts  non- 
existent if  time  as  such  does  not  exist.    Thus  we  seem    as  Be  ke  ey 
once  remarked,   "lost  and  embrangled  in   inextricable  difficulties. 
°p"r    esrrullerton^^  has  called  our  attention  to  the  fact  tha   something 
over  a  thousand  years  ago  St.  Augustine  was  disturbed  on  this  same 
p^Lt.     "Those  two  times,  past  and  future,  how  can  they  be^when  tte  , 
past  is  not  now,  and  the  future  is  not  yet?     .     .  ^    ■     '  J2J2 
I  the  time  we  may  call  long?    Is  it  future      We  do  ™'  ^^yj  *; 
future  'It  is  long';  for  as  yet  there  exists  nothing  to  be  long.    \\e  say, 
'it  w  U  be  ong.'    But  when?"    Surely  not  when  it  is  present   etc.,  etc 
Hs  sit  on -that  "long,"  "short,"  etc.,  when  applied  to  time,  mus 
te  interpreted  in  terms  of  memory  and  anticipation  only  evades  the  point 
b^ transe  ring  the  whole  discussion  and  its  interest  to  another  field. 
The  question  is  by  no  means  obsolete,  and  perhaps  we  must  count  our- 
selves lucky  if  we  can  dispose  of  the  matter  as  well  as  he  did. 

If  we  a'e  to  give  common  language  any  consideration  at  all  we  shal 
find  some  of  its  expressions  about  as  near  a  real  theory  of  transcendenc 
as  some  other  of  its  expressions  are  far  away  from  such  a  theory.    While  it 
m:  scandali.ed'at  the  suggesUon  that  any  P-'.— --'  ^ 
real  it  would  be  equally  offended  if  one  should  say.     There  is  no  sucl^ 
W  as  the  past  or  future!"    On  the  one  hand  the  past  is  not  real;  tha 
s  a  matter  of  course.    But  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  certainly  a  real 
past     It  does  not  do  to  try  to  force  common  sense  to  be  content  with 
saving  that  the  past  did  exist,  because  then  it  was  present,  not  past  at 
I^nI    there  I  a  past,-at  least  I  do  not  mean  she-  "othmg"^- 
when  I  speak  of  it.     It  is  no  wonder  that  common  sense      so  f    quentl> 
outraged  by  the  "philosophers"  because,  m  the  chaotic    hit-or-m.ss 
ac  umulation  of  common  sense  judgments  that  the  race  has  acquired, 


"  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,  Par.  98. 
M  Introduction  to  Phil.,  p.  90. 


24  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

there  is  great  enough  variety  to  make  sure  that  no  matter  what  con- 
clusion thought  might  come  to,  it  is  bound  to  contradict  a  whole  lot 
of  them.  Common  sense,  in  its  deliverances  on  such  questions  as  the 
above,  is  just  about  as  idealistic  as  it  is  anything  else, — but  then,  of 
course,  it  is  not  consistently  anything. 

Augustine,  as  we  saw,  seeks  refuge  in  the  thought  that  long  and 
short  time,  etc.,  as  we  know  it,  is  relative  to  our  memories,  expectations, 
and  purposes.  This  was,  no  doubt,  to  a  certain  extent,  an  evasion  of  the 
problem  he  had  started  out  with.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  a  theory  of 
time  must  be  consistent  with  all  the  facts,  and  psychological  facts  are 
as  much  facts  as  any  others  are.  What  he  made  out  was,  essentially, 
that  time  as  we  know  it  in  our  living  experience  is  relative  to  our  present 
situation,  to  the  memories  we  treasure  and  the  plans  and  hopes  we  have 
at  heart.  "As  we  know  it  in  our  experience — ,"  but  I  do  not  see  that 
we  have  anything  else  to  go  on  than  just  that, — any  other  way  of  know- 
ing it,  or  any  outside  experience  to  build  our  theory  on.  So,  it  may  not 
be  amiss  to  review  hastily  some  of  the  respects  in  which  our  time  is 
relative. 

That  at  least  our  estimates  of  time  are  relative  scarcely  needs  pointing 
out.  If  a  great  need  oppresses  us  and  time  is  required  for  its  satisfaction, 
it  makes  little  difference  how  much  cosmic  change  goes  on  during  the 
interval,  that  interval  is  long  for  us  in  every  sense  of  the  word.  For 
the  young  the  days  are  short  but  the  years  are  long;  for  the  old  the  years 
are  short  but  the  days  are  long.  The  hour  of  monotony  is  longest  in 
passing  but  shortest  as  remembered;  the  hour  of  pleasure  is  shortest  in 
passing  but  longest  in  memory,  etc.  And  this  relativity  is  true  even  on 
a  much  greater  scale.  If  a  gnat's  wing  executes  fifty  consciously  directed 
movements  in  the  shortest  duration  that  is  discernable  to  us,  then,  as 
Mr.  Spencer^*  has  pointed  out,  its  notion  of  a  day  must  be  vastly  dif- 
ferent from  ours.  And  so  far  as  that  is  concerned  there  is  no  a  priori 
reason  why  there  should  not  be  beings,  as  Professor  Royce'*^  suggests, 
with  so  different  a  time-sense  that  they  would  live  whole  geological 
periods  in  the  time  that  for  us  would  be  practically  negligible.  And 
similarly,  there  might  easily  exist  beings  who  would  regard  the  eternities 
of  our  astronomical  cycles  as  too  brief  for  serious  consideration.^^ 

"  Psychology,  Sec.  91,  quoted  by  James,  Principles  of  Psychology,  Vol.  i,  p.  639. 
'"  World  and  Individual,  Vol.  ii,  p.  130  ff. 

''  Cf.  also  Coudillac,  Treatise  on  Sensation,  Ch.  iv,  and  K.  E.  von  Bar,  Welche 
A  uffassung  der  lehenden  Natiir  ist  die  richtige? 


THE  RELATIVITY  OF  TIME  25- 

Considering  the  question  from  a  slightly  different  standpoint,  we 
may  inquire  whether  there  are  not  types  of  experience  common  to  us  in 
which  there  is  no  time  consciousness.  In  his  Principles  of  Pragmatism^^ 
Dr.  Bawden  suggests  that  there  are  states  in  which  the  ordinary  dis- 
tinctions of  means  and  ends,  hope  and  memory,  past  and  future,  are 
forgotten,  and  when,  from  the  standpoint  of  conscious  time  relations, 
the  state  of  mind  is  practically  absolute.  He  offers,  as  an  example,  the 
state  of  mind  of  a  man  who  has  just  realized  his  ambition  to  complete 
a  savings  account  of  one  thousand  dollars  in  the  bank.  The  unalloyed 
joy  of  success  is  oblivious  of  age  and  change.  But  while  we  have  no 
disposition  to  doubt  the  existence  of  states  of  consciousness  which, 
seen  from  the  inside,  are  untemporal  (on  the  contrary  we  are  quite 
convinced  that  such  a  condition  is  frequently  realized  in  cases  of  artistic 
absorption  and  contemplative  abstraction),  it  seems  to  us  nevertheless 
that  the  illustration  chosen  by  Dr.  Bawden  is  unfortunate.  One  would 
think  that  the  state  of  mind  of  the  man  he  describes  would  be  preemi- 
nently one  of  "Now  at  last,  after  all  this  effort,"  etc.,  rather  than  a  time- 
forgetting  ecstatic  inundation!  But  however  that  may  be,  there  are 
instances  enough  in  which  the  ordinary  considerations  of  before  and 
after,  means  and  end,  etc.,  are  absent  and  to  which  Dr.  Bawden's  remarks 
would  well  apply.  It  is  interesting,  by  the  way,  that  even  he,  a  prag- 
matist,  uses  with  reference  to  them  that  mystical  phrase  "collapse  into 
immediacy"^*  which,  I  believe,  comes  from  Hegel,  the  absolutist  of 
absolutists! 

But  while  the  point  he  makes  is  in  all  probability  a  valid  one,  it  does 
not  seem  to  me  to  be  of  the  greatest  importance  so  far  as  the  general 
theory  of  time  relations  is  concerned.  It  is  from  the  consciousness 
of  time,  not  the  unconsciousness  of  it,  that  we  must  get  the  data  for  our 
final  view.  We  shall  therefore  omit,  for  the  present,  any  detailed  dis- 
cussion of  this  interesting  phase  of  the  problem. 

The  one  great  premise  that  our  immediate  experience  gives  us  is 
simply  that  we  are  literally  conscious  of  duration.  As  Augustine  insisted 
with  a  quaint,  dignified  sort  of  petulence — "And  yet.  Lord,  we  do  perceive 
periods  of  time  and  compare  them  with  one  another  !"^^  Not  that  we 
feel  pure  time  buzzing  along  by  itself,  but  we  nevertheless  immediately 
know  succession  with  its  implied  dip  into  past  and  future.     This  we 

'=p.  309ff. 

3'  p.  310. 

*•  Confessions,  Book  xi,  Ch.  16. 


26  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

could  never  do  were  we  limited  to  the  data  that  one  indivisible  instant 
of  time  would  afford.  To  know  that  change  is  going  on  at  all  the 
presence  of  some  finite  amount  of  the  process  to  consciousness  in  one 
whole  is  absolutely  necessary.  Professor  FuUerton  states  the  case 
as  follows,  "No  instantaneous  photograph  of  consciousness,  however 
much  memory,  etc.,  it  could  show,  would  give  any  clue  to  the  idea  of 
duration."^*  And  so  "it  is  only  necessary  to  take  one's  stand  upon  the 
fact  that  we  really  are  conscious  of  duration,  and  to  keep  clearly  in 
view  what  this  implies. "^^  The  span  of  consciousness  must,  that  is, 
include  more  than  one  instant,  and  this  span  marks  out  the  limits  of  the 
present  for  the  consciousness  referred  to.  Says  Professor  Ladd,  in  a 
passage  which  he  certainly  forgets  later  in  his  discussion,  "It  is  the 
grasp  of  consciousness  that  gives  to  the  'now'  of  time  experience  all  the 
reality  that  it  has."^^  In  short,  whatever  one  may  choose  to  think  about 
the  reaUty  of  what  we  shall  call  the  "logical"  present  (that  is,  the  mathe- 
matical present, — the  one  without  duration  that  merely  divides  past  and 
future)  in  the  external  world,  that  logical  present  is  just  as  "external" 
to  concrete  experience  as  is  the  hypothetical  world  of  abstract  law  in 
which  the  mathematician  places  it.  Of  course,  if  consciousness  really 
existed  in  any  such  an  absolute  present  as  that,  it  could  never  know  the 
present  at  all  as  a  division  of  time. 

But  if,  for  us,  the  present  seems  to  be  relative  to  the  scope  or  span 
of  consciousness,  is  it  not  at  the  same  time  relative  to  events  that  are 
going  on  in  the  world  at  large?  In  one  sense  that  seems  to  be  the  case. 
The  change  of  the  cosmos  is  largely  independent  of  us,  including  even 
most  of  the  periodical  rhythms  of  our  own  life  in  terms  of  which  our  esti- 
mates of  time  are  balanced.  But  no  appeal  to  the  cosmic  movement 
_back  of,  and  in,  these  changes  will  help  to  solve  the  present  problem. 
Let  us  admit  that  the  time  sense  would  be  impossible  without  change, 
and  that  most  of  that  change  is  beyond  our  control,  not  excepting  the 
organic  rhythms  we  spoke  of,  and  then  let  us  try  to  define  the  present 
in  terms  of  such  change.  I  do  not  think  it  can  be  done.  One  may 
say,  for  instance,  that  the  present  is  the  actual  point  of  change;  that  our 
conscious  present,  to  be  sure,  seems  to  cover  more  time  than  that,  but 
that  if  we  were  only  capable  of  discernment  sharp  enough  we  would  see 
that  the  remainder  of  that  "present"  was  really  past  and  future.     But 

''  System  of  Metaphysics,  p.  205. 

3«  Ibid.,  p.  207. 

"  Theory  of  Reality,  p.  188. 


THE  RELATIVITY  OF  TIME  27 

there  are  difl&culties  here.  In  the  first  place,  (a)  one  must  at  best 
locate  this  real  point  of  change  in  terms  of  the  conscious  present,  if  it 
is  to  have  any  meaning  at  all.  It  turns  out  that  the  "  real"  present  is  that 
point  of  the  apparent  present  at  which  change  is  actually  going  on; 
and  this  implicitly  gives  all  the  logical  priority  to  the  conscious  present 
as  we  actually  know  it.  And  further  (b)  it  is  perfectly  meaningless 
to  say  that  it  is  the  point  of  "real"  change,  since  our  knowledge  of  the 
past  is  as  really  in  terms  of  change  as  is  our  knowledge  of  the  present. 
The  only  meaning  that  the  word  "real"  could  possibly  have  in  this  con- 
nection is  as  synonymous  with  "present,"  in  which  case,  of  course,  the 
definition  is  completely  tautologous.  And  (c)  as  a  simple  matter  of 
fact  the  conscious  present  does  not  contain  any  such  crucial  point,  or 
ridge,  or  watershed  at  which  "real"  change  goes  on,  ahead  of  which 
all  is  ideal  and  indeterminate  and  back  of  which  finished  fact  lies  silentlv 
in  state.  On  the  contrary  we  are  directly  conscious  of  a  finite  amount  of 
change  going  on  over  a  perfectly  real  span  of  consciousness,  and  our  sense 
of  control  of  part  of  this  world  of  our  conscious  life  is  just  as  expansive 
and  inclusive  from  the  temporal  standpoint.  That  is,  in  our  volitional 
control  of  elements  in  experience,  we  do  not  simply  have  to  strike  instan- 
taneously at  an  event  as  it  slips  over  the  hair-line  of  the  transit;  it  is 
subject  to  our  direction,  if  at  all,  during  the  whole  period  that  we  call 
the   specious   present. 

Of  course,  this  specious  present  has  no  perfectly  definite  boundaries. 
Its  scope  is  wider  for  some  people  than  for  others;  for  the  same  individual 
it  is  more  inclusive  at  some  times  than  at  others;  and  never  is  it  distinctly 
marked  off  from  the  past  and  the  future.  The  concrete  life  of  the 
present  with  its  sense  basis  gradually  melts  away  in  both  directions  into 
complete  ideality, — the  ideality  of  memory  on  the  one  hand  and  that  of 
anticipation  on  the  other.  But,  although  no  clear  line  may  be  drawn 
between  them,  these  types  of  fact  are  in  the  main  as  easily  distinguishable 
as  day  and  night,  which  latter  are  never  very  seriously  confused  on 
account  of  the  gradations  by  which  one  dissolves  into  the  other. 

One  thing  that  surely  seems  to  relate  our  time  consciousness  to  some 
outer  necessity  of  a  cosmic  sort  is,  as  so  many  have  pointed  out,  that  the 
series  is  irreversible.  We  may  hope  and  plan  for  the  future,  but  so  far 
as  the  past  is  concerned,  "What's  done,  's  done!"  In  a  sense  remorse 
is  hope  turned  wrong  side  out;  it  is  our  volition  beating  its  wings  against 
the  barred  gates  of  the  past.  In  short,  the  "direction"  in  which  we 
must  go  is  absolutely  fixed  in  the  nature  of  things, — a  determination, 


28  SOME  VIEWS  or  the  time  problem 

of  course,  which  needs  explanation.  Kant^^  held  that  the  order  of  events 
in  time  for  us  depends  upon  an  abstract  and  necessary  law  of  causality 
by  which  we  see  one  fact  to  be  the  antecedent  and  the  other  the  con- 
sequent by  virtue  of  the  necessary  dependence  of  the  latter  on  the 
former.  A  heavy  ball,  let  us  say,  is  placed  on  a  pillow  and  makes  a 
depression  in  it.  If  our  knowledge  of  the  properties  of  cushion  and  ball 
is  at  all  correct,  it  is  at  once  evident  that  the  depression  must  follow  the 
placing  there  of  the  ball;  on  the  other  hand,  the  depression  in  the  pillow 
might  have  been  caused  in  an  infinite  variety  of  ways.  Thus,  while  it 
is  possible  to  deduce  the  effect  from  the  cause,  it  is  not  possible  to  deter- 
mine the  nature  of  the  cause  from  that  of  the  effect.  In  this  fact,  then,  we 
have  a  basis  for  the  definite  direction,  or  order,  of  our  time  series. 

This  conception  Professor  Rogers^^  criticizes  as  resting  upon  a  loose 
and  gratuitous  conception  of  cause  and  effect.  As  Mill  has  shown, 
the  real  and  complete  cause  of  any  event  is  the  whole  universal  state  of 
things  immediately  preceding  it,  and  the  complete  effect  is  the  state  of 
the  whole  universe  in  the  instant  following  the  cause.  And  if  the  rela- 
tionship be  understood  in  this  more  exact  manner  the  connection,  if 
necessary  in  one  direction,  is  equally  necessary  in  the  reverse  direction. 
Or,  to  go  back  to  the  illustration  cited  by  Kant,  the  depression  in  the 
pillow  is  compatible  with  more  than  one  cause  only  if  we  consider  this 
one  fact,  the  depression,  out  of  all  connection  with  the  rest  of  the  universe. 
But  this  abstraction  is  unwarranted.  This  fact  in  reality  exists  only  in 
connection  with  the  others;  and  if  we  knew  all  these  others  it  would 
appear  that  nothing  else  than  just  that  lead  ball  could  possibly  have 
been  in  just  that  place  at  just  that  moment,  and  it  becomes  just  as  easy 
to  see  the  cause  in  an  effect  as  the  effect  in  a  cause.  In  other  words, 
the  term  "t"  in  the  equation  of  the  universe  may  be  given  either  a 
positive  or  negative  value  with  equal  mathematical  propriety.  We 
make  it  positive  when  we  wish  to  figure  forward  and  negative  to  figure 
backward.  One  is  just  as  safe  in  calculating  the  eclipses  of  a  thousand 
years  ago  as  in  predicting  those  of  a  thousand  years  to  come.  Thus 
there  is  no  rational  necessity  in  the  laws  of  phenomena  on  which  the 
order  of  events  in  time  may  depend,  and  so  the  basis  of  the  distinction 
of  past  and  future  must  be  sought  elsewhere  than  in  the  series  considered 
either  (1)  as  phenomena  of  mutually  exclusive  moments,  or  (2)  as  related 
terms  of  cause  and  effect. 

'*  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  Second  Analogy,  pp.  155-172  (Miiller's  Tr.). 
''  R.  A.  P.  Rogers,  Meaning  of  the  Time  Direction,  Mind,  U.  S.  xiv. 


THE  RELATIVITY  OF  TIME 


29 


In  this  connection,  however,  a  dangerous  suggestion  is  made,  even 
though  it  is  formally  guarded,— the  suggestion  that  if  the  direction  of 
every  particle  in  the  universe  were  suddenly  reversed  while  yet  it  kept 
exactly  the  same  velocity,  phenomena  might  run  back  over  their  past 
history  in  reverse  order  to  that  in  which  they  have  actually  occurred. 
Professor  Ward^«  also  discusses  this  question  and,  I  believe,  comes  to  a 
similar  conclusion,— that  is,  in  so  far  as  phenomena  are  considered  as  a 
necessary  sequence  of  cause  and  effect.     And  so  long  as  one's  attention 
is  limited  to  such  purely  mechanical  and  molar  series  as  lunar  eclipses 
the  suggestion  seems  an  altogether  probable  one.     But  one  gets  into 
trouble  if  one  tries  to  apply  it  very  widely.    The  steam  confined  in  the 
cyhnder  of  an  engine,  let  us  say,  is  expanding  when  the  shock  of  this 
universal  reversal  of  all  motion  comes.     Suddenly  the  direction  of  every 
bounding  molecule  of  the  gas  is  exactly  reversed.     Will  the  bombardment 
of  the  walls  of  the  cyhnder  by  these  molecules  be  diminished?    The 
kinetic  theory  of  gases  will  hardly  permit  us  to  say  that  the  pressure 
on  the  piston  would  in  such  a  case  be  changed  to  a  kind  of  suction,  and 
so  its  motion  consistently  reversed!     Or,  to  take  a  still  more  obvious 
case,  it  is  probably  evident  that  a  change  in  the  direction  of  movement 
would  hardly  start  the  organic  processess  in  a  grown  man  back  toward 
babyhood ! 

We  do  not,  however,  conclude  from  this  that  the  law  of  necessary 
causation  is  not  reversible.  On  the  contrary,  we  agree  heartily  with 
Professor  Rogers's  contention  that,  considered  as  an  objective  series  only, 
the  events  of  a  closed  causal  series  have  no  mathematical  preference  for 
one  direction  over  another.  But  the  above  illustration  is  unfortunate 
simply  in  that  it  does  not  cover  all  the  facts.  It  conceives  of  motion, 
only,  as  being  reversed;  and  that  would  be  an  adequate  example  for  the 
point  in  question  only  if  one  were  prepared  to  hold  that  all  relations  of 
cause  and  effect  are  reducible,  not  merely  to  motion,  but  to  direction  of 
motion,  simply.  No  one  who  has  heard  of  chemical  relationships,  for 
instance,  would  care  to  try  to  reduce  them  simply  to  types  of  motion, 
the  only  determinants  of  which  were  velocity  and  direction.  The  above 
illustration,  therefore,  we  seem  bound  to  regard  as  a  misleading  one. 

"  Jas.  Ward,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  Vol.  i,  p.  203.  In  thi^  di^cu.sion  he  at 
least  quotes  Helmholtz  {WissenshaJlUche  Abhandlungen,  Bd.  in,  p.  594)  wi  h  implied 
agreement  with  the  latter's  position.  And  Helmholt.  holds  that  a  complete  reversal 
of  all  atomic  movements  in  the  universe  would  start  the  whole  process  of  evolution 
backward. 


30  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

The  reason  for  discussing  that  illustration  so  much  at  length  is  simply 
that  it  is  so  often  met  with  in  the  literature  of  the  subject.  As  indicated 
above,  we  are  in  perfect  sympathy  with  the  general  conclusion  to  which 
Professor  Rogers  comes,  that,  apart  from  the  facts  of  consciousness, 
the  very  distinction  of  future  from  past  (in  that  sense,  the  "direction" 
of  the  time  order)  is  rendered  logically  impossible.  It  may  be  a  little 
extreme  to  say  that  "desire,  then,  is  the  subjective  element  which  gives  a 
meaning  to  the  distinction  between  past  and  present,"  but  if  we  under- 
stand desire  to  stand  for  all  allied  conscious  functions  such  as  regret, 
hope,  satisfaction,  memory,  anticipation,  etc., — the  concrete  orientation 
of  experience  in  general,  we  must  certainly  accept  the  conclusion  to 
which  this  author  comes. 

But  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  this  brings  us  back  so  abruptly  to  con- 
sciousness again  as  the  source  and  ground  of  time  distinctions,  the  claim 
will  not  down  that  this  given  drift  of  the  time  series  must  link  it  to 
some  controlling  outer  necessity.  It  is  sometimes  pointed  out  that  in 
this  one  respect  (irreversibility)  time  differs  very  conspicuously  from  the 
other  serial  relationships  in  terms  of  which  our  experience  is  built, — 
that,  while  it  is  possible  to  regard  space  as  one  of  our  ways  of  relating 
things,  time  must,  in  view  of  this  difference,  be  regarded  as  rooting 
deeper  in  reality.  But  as  the  statement  is  ordinarily  put,  does  it  really 
compare  the  spatial  and  temporal  series  on  an  equal  footing?  Suppose 
we  say  that  the  spatial  series  is  reversible  while  the  temporal  series  is  not. 
This  means,  let  us  suppose,  that  a  real  object  may  traverse  a  given 
part  of  space  a  second  time,  while  a  given  period  of  time  can  be  experi- 
enced but  once.  This,  I  think,  would  be  the  ordinary  meaning.  How- 
ever, it  must  be  evident  on  a  moment's  thought  that  in  these  two  alter- 
natives, spatial  and  temporal  terms  are  thoroughly  tangled.  Suppose  an 
object  does  traverse  exactly  the  same  space  a  second  time;  can  it  be  said 
that  we  are  dealing  here  only  with  the  spatial  series?  What  would  a 
second  time  have  to  do  with  a  purely  spatial  series?  On  the  contrary, 
is  not  time  here  the  central  fact  of  the  whole  situation?  In  which  case 
we  must  state  the  supposed  alternative  as  follows:  A  given  series  of 
points  in  space  can  be  experienced  a  second  tifne,  while  a  given  series 
of  points  in  time  cannot  be  experienced  a  second  tbne.  That  is,  a  spatial- 
temporal  series  is  compared  with  a  temporal-temporal  series,  and  it  is 
no  wonder  that  a  difference  in  principle  should  be  found  to  obtain 
between  the  two.  We  set  out  to  compare  time  with  something  else, 
and  then  state  the  proposition  in  such  a  way  that  time  becomes  the 
common  denominator  of  both, — of  itself  and  of  the  other  series  with 


THE  KELATIMTV  OF  TIME  31 

which  it  is  being  compared.  No  final  comparison  can  be  made  on  these 
terms. 

But  perhaps  there  is  another  way  to  understand  the  whole  con- 
tention. Suppose  we  say  that  direction  is  the  only  thing  referred  to  in 
this  case.  When  it  is  said  that  the  space  series  is  reversible  while  the 
time  series  is  not,  we  should  then  mean  that  an  object  can  go  in  any 
direction  in  space  while  time  changes  in  only  one  direction, — from  past 
toward  the  future.  But  here  again,  it  seems  to  me,  we  have  failed  to 
oppose  a  spatial  to  a  temporal  series  in  a  simple  and  coordinate  manner. 
Is  direction  of  movement  any  more  a  spatial  than  a  temporal  phenomenon, 
even  when  the  movement  is  ordinary  spatial  movement  and  the  direc- 
tion, therefore,  supposedly  a  spatial  direction?  Movement,  like  any 
other  change,  is  inherently  a  time  function.  Take  any  two  points  on 
the  path  of  a  moving  body,  and  the  direction  of  movement  means  simply 
which  of  the  two  points  was  occupied  first  (i.  e.,  in  time).  It  appears, 
then,  that  instead  of  a  simple  space  series,  we  have,  on  this  side,  a  com- 
plicated space-time  function.  And  the  other  alternative  would,  on  this 
view  of  the  problem,  be  little  better  off.  What  could  one  possibly  mean 
by  "direction"  in  time  anyhow?  Of  course,  we  will  be  told  that  the 
expression  is  figurative  merely;  but  is  there  any  way  to  state  the  idea  so 
that  it  would  not  be  figurative?  A  figure  is  not  a  fortunate  one  when  it 
usurps  all  the  meaning  to  itself  and  completely  conceals  the  analogy 
it  is  meant  to  embody.  At  any  rate,  it  is  evident  that  here  again  we  are 
not  comparing  a  simple  space  series  with  a  simple  and  coordinate  time 
series,  and  that  is  just  what  ought  to  be  done  if  the  distinction  in  question 
is  to  be  maintained. 

And  if,  now,  we  get  away  from  the  purely  spatial  metaphor'*'  usually 
inherent  in  our  notion  of  time  (as  when  we  spoke  of  "direction"  in  time 
a  few  lines  above)  the  situation  simmers  down  to  about  this.  Space  and 
time  are  names  for  certain  serial  quanta  in  experience.  Since  they  are 
quanta  I  can  refer  to  them  in  terms  of  number  and  magnitude.  I 
can  measure  a  hundred  feet  or  miles  or  millimeters  in  space,  or  a  hundred 
hours,  or  seconds  or  centuries  in  time.  To  be  sure  I  cannot  wait  five 
hours  into  the  past.  But  then,  it  would  be  about  as  easy  to  do  that  as 
to  walk  a  minus  five  miles  in  space!  In  neither  case  does  a  negative 
quantity  have  other  than  a  symbolic  application.  In  other  words,  the 
ordinary  method  of  elevating  time  to  a  position  of  less  relativity  to  us  and 
to  our  experience  consists  in  stating  it  in  terms  wholly  metaphorical, 

^'  Cf.  Bcrgson,  Time  and  Free  Will. 


32  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

taking  the  metaphor  in  a  perfectly  Hteral  way,  finding  that  as  so  taken  it 
breaks  through  in  spots,  and  then  finally  announcing  that  therefore 
time  is  possessed  of  some  very  remarkable  and  even  mystical  pecuHari- 
ties!  This  does  not  prove  much,  and  we  are  left  about  where  we  were  a 
paragraph  or  so  back :  Time  as  we  know  it  is  largely  relative  to  the  form 
of  our  own  consciousness  even  for  its  distinction  into  past,  present,  and 
future;  and  all  these  terms  would  be  utterly  meaningless  if  abstracted 
from  their  experience-basis  in  which  they  find  their  origin  and  only 
support. 

"Yes,"  it  may  be  said,  "time,  as  it  indeed  seems  to  us,  is  a  function 
of  conscious  experience;  but  we  ordinarily  distinguish  between  a  duration 
that  'seems'  long,  and  one  that  really  'is'  long.  The  week  before  vaca- 
tion seems  infinitel}^  longer  in  passing  than  does  the  vacation  week 
itself,  but  I  know  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  two  weeks  are  of  the  very 
same  length.  My  consciousness  is  a  timepiece  but  a  poor  one  after 
all,  and  I  have  to  be  continually  setting  it  right  by  reference  to  the 
great  clock  of  the  cosmos  which  has  circling  planets  and  stars  for  its 
wheels  and  hands.  Each  conscious  being  has  a  'time'  of  his  own,  but 
such  time,  nevertheless,  is  even  consciously  relative  to  the  real  outer  Time. 
I  may  swallow  a  few  grains  of  the  appropriate  drugs  and  my  time  values 
will  be  so  altered  that  I  may  seem  to  live  centuries  during  the  course  of 
a  few  minutes.  But  I  awake  and  find  that  the  sun  is  not  far  from  where 
it  was  when  I  went  to  sleep ;  the  flowers  on  the  table  have  not  yet  wilted ; 
and  I  forthwith  decide  that  my  appalling  longevity  was  only  a  dream." 

Such,  undoubtedly,  is  in  a  large  measure  true,  but  still  I  doubt  that 
the  "cosmic  clock"  is  our  whole  criterion.  In  the  first  place,  whence 
comes  my  conviction  that  the  sun  goes  at  a  fairly  constant  speed  and 
that  days  are  all  of  about  a  length?  I  surely  do  not  know  this  in  advance 
of  experience,  nor  have  I  esoteric  information  on  the  subject  from  a 
higher  source.  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  have  decided  that  the  sun  does 
not  always  go  around  the  circuit  of  its  apparent  path  in  the  same  time. 
We  go  by  mean  solar  time  for  the  explicit  reason  that  we  consider  solar 
time  altogether  too  erratic.  But  this  only  pushes  the  question  one  notch 
further  back:  Whence  my  conviction  that  the  stellar  universe  makes  one 
apparent  revolution  in  exactly  the  same  time  in  which  it  makes  any 
other?  or  that  my  chronometers  and  the  "laws"  that  run  them  proceed 
at  a  perfectly  uniform  speed?  There  are  two  conceivable  reasons  for 
this  conviction;  or  better,  perhaps,  one  reason  with  two  sides  to  it. 
In  the  first  place,  such  an  assumption  affords  us  a  common  standard  of 
reference  in  the  complex  life  of  society;  and  in  the  second  place,  we  find 


THE  RELATIVITY  OF  TIME  33 

that  an  assumption  of  such  uniformity  in  nature  is  about  the  only  way 
we  can  reduce  our  own  thought  life  to  any  sort  of  system.  In  other  words, 
the  "real"  time,  over  against  which  we  contrast  the  "seeming"  time 
values  of  our  varying  experience,  is  itself  an  assumption  of  which  the 
sole  warrant  is  that  it  makes  our  experience  seem  right! 

(b)  One  other  consideration  along  that  line.  A  certain  day  seems 
short  to  me,  but  since  the  sun  has  gone  across  the  heavens  but  once 
during  that  period,  I  conclude  that  I  am  wrong.  But  suppose  that  it 
seemed  short  to  everybody;  then  suppose  that  the  next  day  seemed 
unspeakably  long  to  everybody.  The  chances  are  that  we  should 
decide  that  our  "cosmic  clock"  had  itself  gone  wrong!  In  other  words, 
we  would  be  back  to  our  only  really  ultimate  criterion  again. 

If  now.  we  should  say  that  time  as  it  exists  for  us  is  "relative," 
the  meanmg  ought  to  be  fairly  plain.  And  if  we  should  say  that  in  some 
sense  conscious  experience  "transcends"  time,  the  second  statement 
would  mean  nothing  not  included  in  the  first.  It  is  not  a  case  of  bringing 
in  the  "psychological  monster"  that  Mr.  Bradley  so  savagely  anathema- 
tizes. It  requires  no  reference  to  a  noumenal  finite  monad  or  any  other 
deep  and  dark  mystery  of  that  kind.  It  is  a  matter  of  simple  and  direct 
conscious  fact  that  time  relations  exist  and  come  to  their  focus  within 
the  activity  of  intelligence,  and  it  is  here  insisted  that  this  is  not  so  much 
an  hypothesis  to  explain  consciousness,  as  it  is  a  description  of  the 
conscious  facts  themselves.  And  finally,  if  it  should  be  said  that  in 
its  existence  consciousness,  to  just  the  degree  to  which  it  is  able  to 
bind  successive  moments  together  in  one  experience,  is  itself  "timeless" 
(and  this,  I  suppose,  is  about  the  most  infuriating  word  in  the  whole 
philosophical  vocabulary  to  those  who  do  not  hold  a  view  of  this  t)^e), 
that  word,  too,  need  refer  to  nothing  any  more  mysterious  than  do  the 
other  expressions  just  used.  To  say  that,  even  in  our  limited  experience, 
the  time  distinction,  or  the  time  relation,  occurs  as  a  conscious  product 
just  so  far  as  it  is  real  to  us,  is  just  the  same  as  to  say  that  to  this  extent 
the  subject  of  the  temporal  experience  is  timeless  in  its  existence  and 
ground. 

And  it  may  be  well  to  point  out  here  again  that  however  real  are  the 
states  of  mind  in  which  the  time  aspects  are  lost, — the  states  of  artistic 
appreciation,  contemplation,  etc.,  that  were  mentioned  above — these 
are  the  exceptions  that  really  prove  the  rule  (i.  e.,"test"  it, — not  dem- 
onstrate or  disprove  it,  as  the  expression  is  so  often  used  to  mean), — 
they  do  not  constitute  the  facts  on  which  it  is  primarily  based.  As  was 
said  before,  it  is  the  consciousness  of  time,  not  the  unconsciousness  of  it, 


34  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

in  which  time  is  most  obviously  transcended.  It  is  not  when  one  is 
lost  to  the  world  in  day-dream,  but  rather  when  his  grasp  on  the  passage 
of  events,  with  all  its  concrete  duration,  and  all  its  richness  of  movement 
and  change,  is  firmest, — when,  indeed,  his  reflective  consciousness  of 
transcendence  is  least;  it  is  then  that  the  real  time-transcendence  of 
consciousness  is  most  assured. 

This  point  we  can,  perhaps,  enforce  by  a  brief  reference  to  Professor 
Lovejoy's  article  The  Place  of  the  Time  Problem  in  Modern  Philosophy }- 
In  this  it  is  insisted  that  "idealistic  eternahsm"  rests  on  a  "deep-reach- 
ing confusion  of  conceptual  time  with  the  real  time  of  our  inner  life, — 
of  thinking  about  a  transition  with  the  transition  itself."  This  view  we 
do  not  need  to  discuss  in  detail  here  for  two  reasons.  In  the  first  place, 
it  is  very  closely  allied  to  Professor  Bergson's  conception  of  time  to  which 
latter  a  subsequent  section  of  the  present  paper  is  devoted.  And, 
in  the  second  place,  we  must  resist  the  temptation  to  elaborate  the  point 
that  Professor  Lovejoy's  theory,  like  any  other  theory,  is  a  "way  of 
thinking  about"  change.  It  is  always  easy  to  accuse  the  opponent 
of  using  "mere  ideas,"  but  the  accusation  always  involves  the  enter- 
taining circle  we  have  just  referred  to,  and  which  numbers  have  pointed 
out  before.  The  present  purpose  is  merely  to  ask  if  it  is  true  that  eter- 
nalism  is  necessarily  a  reflection  of  conceptual  time.  • 

In  the  first  place,  no  one,  surely,  would  regard  the  specious  or  psy- 
chological present  as  an  abstract  or  conceptual  affair.  It  is  the  very 
reverse.  The  older  view  according  to  which  the  present  is  a  point  of 
zero  duration  might  fairly  be  regarded  as  conceptual  since  the  present 
according  to  that  view  is  a  mathematical  vanishing  point,  indiscernable 
in  concrete  consciousness.  But  this  is  the  very  view  that  leads  to  the 
hopeless  difficulties  that  Augustine  met  with  in  his  speculations.  If 
we  think  of  the  actual  present  as  being  the  durationless  one  which  does 
not  appear  in  conscious  experience  at  all,  that  surely  is  not  a  really 
ideahstic  view  of  time,  which  by  very  definition  would  mean  the  locating 
of  it  in  the  psychic  world.  If  there  be  any  view  that  should  be  defined 
as  "conceptual"  as  opposed  to  concrete,  that  is  the  highly  abstract 
conception  of  Newton  above  referred  to.  Time  that  "flows"  at  an 
absolutely  conscious  rate,  that  boasts  a  present  that  can  only  be  reached 
over  the  hard  road  of  mathematics  and  which  therefore  is  forever  shut 
out  from  immediate  experience,^-such  a  view  is  indeed  conceptual  to 
an  almost  desperate  pitch.     But  it  is  also  thoroughly  realistic,  not  idealis- 

"  Journal  of  Phil.,  Psy.,  and  Scienlific  Methods,  vii,  p.  23. 


THE  RELATIVITY  OF  TIME  35 

tic  at  all!  If  ''idealistic"  means  that  the  real  world  is  ultimately  a 
a  spiritual  one  and  rests  on  the  life  of  conscious  experience,  then  we 
must  insist  that  conceptual  time  of  the  sort  Professor  Lovejoy  alludes 
to,  points  in  precisely  the  opposite  direction. 

And  on  the  other  hand,  the  specious  present  on  which  we  have 
sought  to  base  the  view  here  set  forth  is  a  fortiori  not  an  abstract  affair. 
It  is  empirical  through  and  through,  rather  than  speculative  "in  the 
bad  sense  of  the  word";  it  is  concrete  rather  than  conceptual.  The  time 
that  consciousness  holds  in  its  grasp  has  real  duration;  instead  of  being 
an  indistinguishable  dividing  line,  it  owns  a  real  succession, — it  weights 
consciousness  with  actual  concrete  movement  of  facts.  And,  as  we 
have  insisted  so  much,  it  is  this  very  inclusiveness  that,  understood 
from  the  side  of  its  ground,  stamps  consciousness  as  to  some  extent 
transcendent.  Of  course,  the  individual  consciousness  known  to  each 
of  us  includes  only  a  very  finite  amount  of  sequence  within  the  boundaries 
of  its  horizon.  But  then,  this  consciousness  itself  is  finite  too.  The 
fact  that  its  span  is  limited  does  not,  on  the  one  hand,  make  it  any 
less  a  real  inclusion  of  time  relations  within  itself;  nor,  on  the  other, 
does  it  imply  that  time,  as  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  such  experience, 
is  conceptual  or  abstract.  Time  that  is  only  symbolically  represented 
in  thought  is,  in  so  far,  not  the  concrete,  immediate,  passing  change  in 
experience  and  so  is  not  in  the  real  sense  of  the  word  transcended  by 
consciousness  at  the  given  moment.  And  if  consciousness  transcends 
time  to  just  the  degree  that,  in  its  existence,  it  rises  superior  to  the  mutual 
exclusion  of  all  the  infinitely  many  parts  of  the  time  continuum,  then 
the  time  which,  though  mathematically  infinitely  divisible,  is  never- 
theless present  to  consciousness  as  a  whole,  cannot  be  abstract  any  more 
than  the  existence  of  that  consciousness  itself  can  be  abstract  or  "con- 
ceptual." In  other  words,  the  specious  present  as  such  means  that  a 
definite  amount  of  actual  transition,  not  simply  of  thinking-about-a- 
transition  should  be  immediate  to  consciousness. 

Of  course,  when  the  absolutist  says  that,  just  as  our  finite  conscious- 
ness spans  a  finite  amount  of  time,  so  an  infinite  consciousness  would 
cover,  in  its  single  glance,  an  infinite  amount  of  time,  he  is  deahng  in 
what  must  be,  for  him,  only  symbolic  and  conceptual.  But  so  is  any 
world  view  when  presented  by  any  one  not  immediately  conscious  of 
the  whole  world  itself.  But  if  this  is  a  fault,  then  all  inference  is  fallacy, — 
all  conceptual  thinking,  even  though  it  be  about  concrete  things,  is  a 
fallacy  of  abstraction.  That  surely  is  a  little  extreme,  especially  for  a 
philosopher ! 


36  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

Down  to  this  point  very  little  has  been  said  about  a  metaphysical 
aspect  to  the  problem.  Granted  that  time,  as  we  know  it,  is  really  a 
construct  of  relations  in  experience,  perhaps  that  does  not  say  what  it  is 
in  itself.  The  whole  world  of  things  is,  for  that  matter,  in  a  sense  my 
ideal  construction, — in  so  far  as  I  can  be  said  to  "know"  it  rather  than 
merely  to  feel  it.  Surely  something  exists !  This  may  roughly  represent 
the  attitude  of  the  reader  at  this  stage  of  the  discussion;  and  to  this 
consideration  we  shall  therefore  turn  at  once. 

The  apparent  "reductio  ad  absurdum"  of  this  criticism  it  is  possible 
to  accept  completely.  To  be  sure  things  are  also  conscious  construc- 
tions as  much  as  is  time.  We  have  said  in  the  introduction  that  change 
is  just  as  real  as  are  the  things  themselves  that  change.  It  is  not  a  sur- 
face phenomenon.  And  we  also  saw  that  the  reverse  side  of  change  is 
the  correlative  fact  of  time,  which  is  therefore  just  as  real  as  things. 
But  if  there  is  one  point  on  which  modern  philosophy  is  practically 
unanimous,  it  is  in  its  complete  repudiation  of  the  old  Kantian  things- 
in-themselves.  Things  as  elements  in  experience  we  know  directly, 
but  the  notion  of  noumenal  things  is  as  useless  as  it  is  meaningless; 
the  things-in-themselves  are  as  unaffirmable  as  they  are  unknowable. 
And  in  a  similar  way,  the  outcome  of  the  foregoing  discussion  of  the 
notion  of  time  is  simply  to  deny  that  there  is  any  cause  for  holding  to  an 
objective,  metaphysical  time-in-itself.  If  the  other  relations  that  hold 
good  in  experience,  such  as  far  and  near,  large  and  small,  substance 
and  quality,  cause  and  effect,  etc.,  are  to  be  understood  as  functions  of 
intelligent  relating  activity,  and  as  having  their  only  conceivable 
reality  there,  then  exactly  the  same  thing  is  to  be  said  of  the  temporal 
relations  of  coexistence  and  sequence.  And  it  is  no  more  queer  in  the  last 
instance  than  in  the  former  ones.  And  surely  if  one  adopts  the  view 
that  ideas  are  essentially  and  only  instrumental,  rather  than  representa- 
tive, this  conclusion  follows  of  its  own  weight. 

Of  course,  there  are  some  ways  in  which  time  really  seems  to  be  an 
entity  in  itself.  We  say  in  common  parlance,  it  "takes  time"  for  things 
to  happen.  As  soon  as  the  cause  of  a  fact  is  complete,  the  fact  should 
be  real,  but  we  find  that  a  necessary  part  of  such  cause  is  always  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  time;  before  this  is  given  the  event  cannot  happen,  no 
matter  what  the  driving  force  behind  it,  and  with  the  requisite  time  the 
causal  setting  is  made  complete.  Thus  the  time  element  does  indeed 
seem  to  "make  a  difference"  in  things.  But,  should  there  be  anything 
plausible  in  the  foregoing,  let  the  following  suggestions  be  considered: 
(1)    The  time  relations  are  certainly  real,  but  are  they  any  more  real 


THE  RELATIVITY  OE  TIME  37 

than  are  the  other  relations  in  the  world  of  phenomena?  Is  the  age  of 
anything  any  more  real  than  its  size  or  shape?  Is  the  hour  that  is 
struck  more  real  than  the  clock  that  strikes  it?  If  the  practically  infinite 
sweep  of  cause  and  effect  that  relates  everything  in  the  universe  to  every 
thing  else, — if  that  can  be  understood  as  having  its  reality  as  a  function 
(in  this  sense  as  a  "category")  of  Intelligence,  and  so  as  requiring  no 
reference  to  any  archetype  having  an  extra-mental,  independent, 
noumenal  existence,  it  would  not  seem  like  a  greater  stretch  of  the 
imagination  to  regard  in  a  similar  way  the  relations  of  coexistence  and 
sequence  that  hold  within  that  Universal  Life.  And  (2)  to  make  time  a 
thing  in  any  real  sense  of  the  word  is  completely  to  detemporalize  it. 
Things  may  grow  together  in  a  temporal  way,  but  it  is  a  simple  con- 
tradiction in  terms  to  regard  time  itself  as  one  of  these  things. 

If  there  is  no  ontological  entity  or  continuum  corresponding  to  our 
conscious  time,  are  we  compelled,  then,  to  say  that  time  is  "only" 
or  "merely"  subjective?  That  all  depends  on  what  one  means  by 
"subjective."  (a)  Time  is  not  subjective  in  the  sense  that  it  is  arbi- 
trary or  consciously  doubtful  or  tentative,  (b)  It  is  not  subjective  in 
the  sense  that  it  is  an  individual  whim,  or  in  any  way  special  to  me. 
We  saw  above  that  our  notion  of  the  "right"  time  has  a  very  evident 
social  reference.  Time  seems  to  be  a  common  measure  of  experience 
in  general,  (c)  It  is  not  subjective  in  the  sense  that  only  the  conscious 
subject  in  experience  is  conditioned  by  it.  It  is  just  as  real  in  objective 
experience  as  in  subjective,  if  indeed  not  a  little  more  so  since  we  are 
perhaps  more  conscious  of  change  in  the  objects  of  experience  than  in 
ourselves.  But  it  is  subjective  in  the  sense  that  it  is  not  an  independent 
reaUty  transcending  intelligence  and  conditioning  it  from  without. 
If  conscious  experience  could  be  blotted  out  there  would  be  no  such 
thing  as  time;  such  words  as  "now"  and  "then,"  "before"  and  "after," 
"past"  and  "present,"  etc.,  would  be  absolutely  inapplicable  to  the 
nothing  that  would  remain.  In  this  rather  derived  sense  we  may  say, 
and  I  believe  must  say,  that  time  is  merely  subjective, — that  is  to  say, 
subjective  in  the  same  sense  that  all  other  relationships  of  experience  are 
subjective. 

But  at  this  point  there  may  come  an  objection  from  another  source. 
We  are  convinced  that  there  is  a  real  time  that  is  infinitely  divisible  and 
also  infinitely  long.  In  conscious  experience  we  find  no  such  fact  as 
this,  and  yet  we  cannot  deny  its  ultimate  truth  without  giving  the  lie 
to  our  whole  time-consciousness.  If  the  fact  of  infinite  divisibility  be 
real,  then  the  real  present  is  the  mathematical  vanishing-point  of  an 


38  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

infinite  process  of  division, — i.  e.,  zero  duration.  If  the  proposition  that 
time  is  infinite  be  true,  then  the  Hmitations  which  the  very  process  of 
ideal  determination  seems  to  require  are  only  apparent,  and  real  time, 
as  over  against  this,  is  infinite.  Therefore,  in  its  own  marks  of  frag- 
mentariness  and  crude  approximation,  our  conscious  time  reveals  its 
inherent  reference  to  an  ultimate  and  extra-mental  Time  beyond.  But 
even  this  sort  of  argument  does  not  turn  out  to  be  conclusive. 

If  the  idea  of  infinity  and  infinite  divisibility  has  no  basis  in  concrete 
experience,  where,  in  the  name  of  all  reason,  does  it  come  from?  We 
seem  to  know  what  infinity  in  both  directions  means;  at  least  we  know 
the  essential  "marks"  of  these  things  well  enough  to  recognize  their 
absence  from  our  own  span  of  duration.  The  fact  is,  of  course,  that 
the  notion  of  infinite  time  is  an  ideal  extension  of  the  duration  we  actu- 
ally grasp  in  a  concrete  way.  I  know  what  the  astronomer  means  when 
he  says  that  the  sun  is  93,000,000  miles  away,  but  I  cannot  claim  to 
experience  that  distance  in  any  concrete  fashion.  For  an  idea  to  be  real 
and  true  it  is  not  necessary  for  it  to  be  reduced  to  the  photograph  or 
moving  picture  form.  So,  with  reference  to  these  ideas  of  the  infinity 
and  infinite  divisibility  of  time,  we  hold  (a)  that  they  are  based  on  the 
facts  of  direct  conscious  experience.  These  ideas,  like  any  other  ideas, 
are  the  constructs  of  the  idealizing  process.  We  Hterally  "think" 
them;  we  do  not  swallow  them  in  capsules.  And,  (b)  in  the  next  place, 
these  ideas  are  true.  But  instead  of  proving  that  therefore  time  is 
outer  and  extra-mental,  this  proposition  only  proves  the  reverse,  viz., 
the  conclusion  for  which  we  have  been  contending  all  along,  that  the 
time  fact  is  essentially  a  form  of  relating  experience  elements.  In 
support  of  this  latter  contention  we  shall  therefore  proceed  to  show 
(1)  that  the  idealist  theory  of  time  gives  an  intelligible  meaning  to  the 
notion  of  its  infinity,  and  (2)  that  the  idea  of  infinite  divisibility  receives, 
on  this  hypothesis,  the  only  explanation  consistent  with  the  fact  that 
we  have  a  consciousness  of  time  at  all. 

(1)  If  time  is  a  form  of  conscious  synthesis,  its  infinity  means  just 
that,  as  a  rule  or  law,  it  contains  no  provision  for  a  stop;  indeed,  as  a 
law  it  is  contradicted  or  annulled  by  the  interposition  of  a  limit.  Thus 
I  know  it  to  be  infinite  simply  because  the  law  of  the  series  admits  of 
no  final  term,  not  because  I  have  actually  followed  it  out  to  an  infinite 
number  of  terms  to  see  if  there  be  an  end!  The  series  1,  K,  M,  /^,  .  . 
.  .  .  is  an  infinite  series,  and  yet,  to  know  it  as  such,  we  need  only 
see  that  the  law  of  relating  its  terms  admits  of  indefinite  application. 
And  so  it  is  with  the  idea  of  time.     If  we  trv  to  conceive  of  time  as  some 


r 


THE  RELATIVITY  OF  TIME 


ultimate    trans-experiential  fact,  then  infinity  for  it  could  "fi"^'^" 
ateot te  ndetermination,-which  means  absolute  unreabty  and  nothmg- 
n    s     But  if  we  regard  it  as  a  form  of  relating  elements  m  experience, 
th  n  it  is  iust  as  re'al  as  those  related  elements  are,  and  Us  mfimty    n, 
the  only  conceivable  meaning  of  the  term  when  applied  to  a  law)  .s  a 
nerfectly  valid  inference  from  its  actual  nature  as  a  concrete  fact. 
'^     (2)  And  its  infinite  divisibility,  on  the  view  here  defended,  woud 
be    nefpreted  in  a  precisely  analogous  manner.    Time  .  mfimtety 
divisible      But  this  does  not  mean  that  it  is  mfinitely  d  vided.    As 
known  n  experience  it  is  not  a  sum  of  zero  durations,  nor  o  mfin, tesmal 
increments  that  are  nearly  zero  but  not  quite.     Nor  even  >s.t  made  up 
of  a  sum  of  "  minimum  discernible"  conscious  units  of  duration^    Jhe  u™ 
of  time  is  always  relative  to  the  purpose  in  hand.     I  say  the  _  p       n 
century",  if  it  is  my  purpose  to  compare  centuries,  «■•  *e     Pre^  "» 
minute"  if  minutes  are  the  objects  of  my  current  reasoning.    The  mini 
mum  discernible  is  the  unit  of  conscious  time  only  when  my   pres  n 
purpose  is  to  realize  the  most  minute  distinction  of  ^^q"^""/^'^^  J 
L  capable  of  making.     But  the  notion  of  infinite  d'V-b.hty    like 
that  of  infinity,   is  an  ideal   extension  of  the  conscious  fact  to  its 
delly  known  mathematical  Umit.     It  is  the  result  of  PO-t-  analyst. 
If  the  possibility  of  temporal  synthesis  is  before  my  mmd,  I  find  that 
an  rea'Se  it  in  a  concrete  way  over  but  a  small  scope  o    e.xper,en 
i.  e.,  the  scope  of  my  specious  present.     But  I  can  -^  ^at  as  a  law 
of  synthesis  it  is  endless,  and  thus  ideally  it  is  mfimte.     Simila  ly, 
when  I  a     mpt  the  process  of  temporal  analysis,  I  find  that  I  can  reahze 
nta  concrete  way'only  to  a  limited  extent,  i.  e.,  to  the  ™-um  dis 
cernible     But,  as  before,  the  law  of  the  process  provides  for  no  stop 
and  I  can  see  ideally  that  it  is  infinite.    This  gives  at  least  a  real  and 
possible  meaning  to  the  notion  of  infinite  divisibility 

Is  there  any  basis,  then,  for  the  premise  so  o  ten  set  "P.  "^  ™ 
instant  can  possibly  exist  at  once?    On  what  I  ^-^■\ff''''^^^ 
view  of  time,  this  means  simply  that  we  cannot  •'d^"'  *e  same    wo 
Ivents  as  both  coexistent  and  sequent.    Of  course,  no  two  m  tants  o 
Ume  can  possibly  exist  "at  the  same  time"  because  this  simply  den   s 
th"t  they  were  really  two  instants  in  the  first  place.    Or,  from  a  shghtly 
dffi  rent'angle,  H  only  means  that  once  you  have  related  two  events  in 
terms  of  before  and  after,  the  first  is  past,  when  considered  from  the 
s    "dpoint  of  the  second,  and  the  second  is  future  w.th  re  erence  t 
the  first  etc.    They  are  still  events  of  consciousness  and  known  only  as 
such  td  there  i^  nothing  in  their  inevitable  sequence  or  temporal 


40  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

otherness  or  mutual  exclusiveness  (which  latter  is  all  included  in  the 
simple  fact  of  sequence)  that  implies  that  they  should  not  both  exist 
within  the  range  of  a  single  conscious  present. 

At  the  risk  of  repetitiousness  it  seems  wise  to  insist  here  again  that 
once  we  try  to  reverse  the  order  of  importance,  and  think  of  conscious- 
ness as  existing  in  time  (that  is,  in  an  absolute  present)  instead  of  think- 
ing of  the  present  as  a  determination  in  consciousness,  we  are  met  by 
the  familiar  difficulties:  (a)  the  absolute  present  is  only  the  thinnest 
abstraction  from  concrete  life,  which  taken  in  itself  leads  to  all  the 
traditional  logical  impossibilities;  and  (b)  if  consciousness  were  really 
in  time,  then  it  could  exist  only  in  the  present  of  that  absolute  time, 
which,  true  to  Augustine's  logic,  not  only  could  never  be  known  as  such, 
but  telescopes  itself  into  a  durationless  present,  which  amounts  to  a 
complete    canceling   of   it. 


We  have  seen  that  the  actual  psychological  present,  as  a  simple 
matter  of  empirical  fact,  is  not  a  durationless  point,  but  is  "specious," — 
has  a  real  time  content.  We  must  now  point  out  how  utterly  hopeless 
it  is  to  try  to  determine  or  define  the  present  on  any  other  basis.  The 
present  facts  of  the  outer  world  do  not  differ  from  past  facts  in  any 
assignable  feature  except  their  concrete  presence  to  consciousness.  The 
laws  that  control  the  events  of  today  are  the  same  as  those  that  were  in 
force  yesterday;  the  application  of  mathematical  formulae  to  the  one 
is  as  direct  and  simple  as  to  the  other, — if,  indeed,  there  is  not  a  slight 
advantage  in  favor  of  the  past;  they  seem  equally  rich  in  qualitative 
content, — the  red  or  cold  or  sour  of  yesterday  resemble  indistinguishably 
the  red  and  cold  and  sour  of  today;  even  the  temporal  relationships  of 
event  to  event — the  inevitable  before-and-after — show  themselves  just 
as  real  and  measured  in  the  organization  of  yesterday  as  in  that  of  today. 
And  so  with  the  future.  The  "will-be"  of  moments  to  come  is  just  as 
definite,  regular,  dependable,  clear-cut,  as  the  "  has-been"  of  yesterday 
or  the  "is"  of  today.  Now,  apart  from  all  reference  to  consciousness, 
let  one  simply  contemplate  the  continuous  series  of  events  of  which  the 
present  moment  is  one,  and  see  if  there  is  anything  about  the  latter  that 
will  distinguish  it  from  the  rest, — supposing  for  the  moment  that  this 
durationless  partition  between  past  and  future  could  be  distinguishable 
at  all.  Our  observer  must  not  seek  for  a  unique  point  of  change,  for 
the  whole  series  is  made  of  change.  Perhaps,  if  he  cannot  make  out 
the  dimensionless  area  (!)  called  "present,"  he  can  at  least  see  some 


THE  RFXATIVITY  OF  TIME  41 

difference  between  future  and  past,  and  then  infer  that  the  illusive 
present  moment  lies  somewhere  between  the  two.  But  here  again  his 
common  criteria  are  forbidden  him.  He  must  not  say  that  the  future  is 
the  locus  of  the  objects  of  purpose,  because,  once  more,  that  is  to  appeal 
to  consciousness.  He  must  draw  no  distinctions  between  memory  and 
expectation,  hope  and  regret,  etc.,  since  that,  too,  would  be  anthropo- 
morphic. And  it  is  very  probable  that,  with  his  resources  thus  limited 
to  a  reality  considered  as  an  objective  mechanical  series  only,  he  will 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  time  is  an  unbroken  continuum,  change 
an  unbroken  series,  and  the  distinction  of  past,  present  and  future  a 
delusion  of  consciousness  only.  What  a  queer  road  to  timelessness 
after  all! 

We  have  spoken  in  the  foregoing  of  the  relation  of  change  to  the 
present.  If,  now,  we  do  not  labor  under  the  restrictions  there  placed 
upon  our  h}'pothetical  observer,  but  leave  ourselves  free  to  come  to  any 
conclusions  whatever  that  the  facts  seem  to  demand,  we  do  find  undoubted- 
ly a  strange  interrelationship  between  change  and  that  irreducible  con- 
crete glow  we  call  the  present.  Common  sense  at  any  rate  would  at 
once  insist  that,  however  much  the  past,  like  the  present,  may  be  a 
kingdom  of  change,  yet  changes  do  not  occur  in  the  past  as  past.  The 
change  belonging  to  any  given  moment  only  really  occurred  when  that 
moment  was  present, — when  it  was  molten,  flowing,  living.  To  be 
sure  change  requires  time  and,  if  it  must  be  thus  spread  out  when  it 
happens,  it  looks  as  if  that  present  would  have  to  be  a  "specious,"  not 
a  mathematical  one.  But  then,  for  immediate  purposes,  we  have 
allowed  ourselves  recourse  even  to  such  a  consideration  as  that,  if  such 
should  seem  necessary.  The  past  is  a  region  of  change,  and  yet  we  say 
change  is  real  only  as  present.  In  other  words,  while  the  past  by  its 
very  definition,  admits  of  no  change,  we  can  only  describe  it  in  terms  of 
change.     Is  there  not  some  confusion  here? 

There  are  at  least  two  ways  in  which  the  past  is  at  the  mercy  of 
some  kind  of  present.  (1)  In  the  first  place,  as  we  have  suggested 
before,  the  past  "is"  real  as  past.  There  is  a  real  past  in  our  universe 
of  reality.  Perhaps  no  one  will  question  that.  Now  let  us  ask,  what 
would  happen  to  that  "past"  if  the  present  should  be  wiped  out  of 
existence?  Then  we  could  no  longer  say  that  there  is  a  real  past  because 
all  conceivable  content  of  the  "is"  would  be  cancelled.  Of  course, 
it  would  be  a  hard  saying  to  insist  that  the  past,  the  only  past  in  all  the 
world,  exists  only  in  the  present, — in  some  sort  of  a  present  at  any  rate. 
And  yet,  what  else  can  \\t  say  under  the  circumstances?     Strangely 


42  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

enough  even  the  past  threatens  to  confront  us  with  the  idea  of  Absolute 
presence!  And  now  (2)  the  converse  of  the  above  is  also  true.  While 
the  past  is  real  as  a  past,  it  was  real  only  as  a  present]  That  is,  to  say- 
that  a  given  event  is  really  a  past  event,  is  only  another  way  of  saying 
that  it  was  once  present.  If  some  playful  god  could  just  cancel  from 
its  reality  that  image  of  the  temporal  present,  it  would  cease  completely 
to  be  real,  even  as  past.  Thus,  once  more,  reaUty  seems  to  balance 
itself  somehow  on  the  concreteness  of  the  present;  when  that  point  is 
gone  the  whole  structure  crashes  into  nothingness. 

If  we  return,  now,  to  the  question  above  encountered  with  reference 
to  change,  we  may  not  be  so  much  surprised  that  the  change  of  which 
the  past  is  built  should  seem  to  have  about  it  such  a  strong  suggestion 
of  the  present.  While  the  past  is  a  series  of  changes,  it  is  equally  true 
that  change,  (1)  requires  time  in  which  to  happen,  and  (2)  requires  that 
that  real  time  should  somehow  be  present  in  order  for  the  change  as 
real  movement  to  be  a  fact.  And  it  must  also  be  evident  by  this  time 
that  the  specious  present  of  consciousness  answers  exactly  to  this  seem- 
ingly paradoxical  description.  Suppose  we  are  wilUng  to  grant  that  the 
present  is  actually  this  function  of  consciousness, — not  that  the  real 
present  somehow  just  "is,"  while  the  specious  present  of  consciousness 
sticks  out,  so  to  speak,  at  both  ends  and  surreptitiously  displays  as  a 
part  of  the  present  what  is  really  a  portion  of  the  past  and  of  the  future, 
but  that,  on  the  contrary,  the  enduring,  living  present  of  consciousness 
is  indefinitely  the  more  real  of  the  two, — the  mathematical,  instantane- 
ous present  of  science  being  only  a  limiting  concept  in  a  process  of  abstrac- 
tion which  could  no  more  be  real  than  a  plane  without  thickness  could  be. 
Then  (1)  in  the  first  place,  we  make  room  for  real  change  with  its  seem- 
ingly contradictory  presuppositions  of  presence  and  duration.  And 
again,  (2)  with  the  real  present  once  shaken  loose  from  that  harrassing 
dilemma  of  the  mathematical  point,  we  can  offer  it  without  embarrass- 
ment as  a  wider,  safer  basis  on  which,  as  we  saw  above,  even  the  past  and 
the  future  must  somehow  stand.  It  may  indeed  be  that  the  specious 
present  of  our  own  consciousness,  however  concrete  and  living  it  may  be, 
is  still  too  narrow  a  foundation  to  support  the  teeming  infinities  of  time 
that  stretch  out  from  us  in  both  directions.  It  is  conceivable,  even, 
that  an  all-embracing  Absolute  present  should,  in  the  last  analysis, 
be  required.  But  the  essential  point  here  is  that  the  present  is  not  a 
point  or  a  plane,  but  a  real,  spread-out  field  of  consciousness,  even  in 
our  own  limited,  finite  world.  The  other  question  need  not  immedi- 
ately concern  us.     And  finally  (3)  while  the  vanishing  mathematical 


THE  RELATIVITY  OF  TIME  43 

present  utterly  cancels  the  real  intelligible  present  of  consciousness,  the 
larger  present,  assumed  as  fundamental,  does  allow  ample  ground  for 
the  exact  present  of  analytical  mechanics,  by  regarding  it  simply  as 
the  limit  of  a  converging  series,  the  exact  content  of  its  final  term  being, 
while  scientifically  useful,  as  far  from  the  distinguishable  content  of 
experience  as  is  the  exact  value  of  H. 

As  a  simple  matter  of  "checking  up"  our  conclusions  down  to  this 
point,  one  further  observation  will  be  useful.  The  idea  of  change  is 
indissolubly  bound  up  with  the  idea  of  the  present,  and  the  present 
turns  out  to  have  its  roots  in  consciousness.  In  such  a  case  it  is  but 
natural  that  there  should  be  the  close  relationship  between  change  and 
consciousness  that  modern  psychology  everywhere  shows  to  be  the  fact. 
Wherever  there  is  consciousness  there  must  be  change  in  the  object  of 
such  consciousness.  A  changeless  object  of  consciousness  is  almost  a 
contradiction  in  terms.  And  if  the  above-formulated  relationships  are 
fundamental  we  might  add  as  a  corollary  to  this  that  where  there  is 
consciousness,  there  is  also  a  real  present,  although  it  needs  no  expert 
syllogizing  to  discover  that!  But  the  end  is  not  yet.  If  our  other  con- 
clusions are  correct,  we  may  read  both  of  these  deductions  in  their 
converse  form  and  they  will  still  hold  good:  (1)  Wherever  there  is  real 
change  there  is  consciousness, — since  change  requires  the  specious 
present,  and  (2)  wherever  there  is  a  present  there  is  consciousness, — 
since  a  present  without  consciousness  turns  out  to  be  only  a  mathematical 
abstraction! 


And  yet,  to  say  that  time  is  thus  a  function  of  intelligent  experience, 
is  a  conclusion  intensely  offensive  to  some  people.  As  an  example  of 
such  antipathy  we  may  refer  to  Professor  Ladd  who  in  most  respects 
may  be  classed  as  an  idealist,  but  who  insists  upon  regarding  time  in  the 
most  realistic  way.  He  courteously  dismisses  the  idealistic  view  of 
time  as  an  "abject  imbecility. "■'^  His  chief  appeal  in  so  doing  is  to 
"  common  sense,"  and  his  formulation  of  the  view  of  common  sense  is  as 
follows:  "Space  and  time  are  thus  regarded  in  the  light  of  'universal 
media.'  Things,  with  all  that  they  really  are  and  all  that  belongs  to  them, 
are  'in'  these  media."'"  And  the  extent  to  which  he  agrees  with  this 
common  sense  notion  may  be  gathered  from  these  statements  of  his  own 
view.     "We   begin   by   accepting   the   confession   of   everybody   that, 

*^  Theory  of  Reality,  p.  189. 
**  Ibid.,  p.  179. 


44  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

somehow,  space  and  time  are  like  'media'  for  the  orderly  arrangement 
of  existences,  of  changes,  and  of  relations."^^  And  again  that  "the 
continuance  of  time — as  past,  present,  and  future — must  be  regarded 
as  the  medium  in  which  things  exist. ""^^  Thus  he  takes  common  sense 
at  its  face  value.  Of  course,  it  may  be  entirely  right.  Indeed,  it  is  in 
all  probability  just  as  accurate  and  final  an  authority  on  this  question 
as  on  any  other  of  a  highly  technical  nature.  But  along  with  this 
authority  he  suggests  an  argument.  In  this  he  aims  to  show  that 
without  some  kind  of  absolute  time  there  is  no  warrant  that  A's  present 
should  coincide  with  B's,  etc.,  and  that  "thus  the  purely  subjective 
view  of  time  consciousness  destroys  the  possibility  of  society,  of  history, 
of   the  intercourse  and  development  of   the   race." !*^ 

Events,  we  are  told,  must  have  absolute  dates.  The  event  itself  must 
have  "something  to  say  about  its  own  proper  location"  in  time.  Cer- 
tainly, but  the  idealistic  conclusion  does  not  mean  that  the  temporal 
relations  in  experience  are  arbitary,  any  more  than  it  implies  such  a  con- 
clusion in  the  case  of  any  other  realtions, — most  of  which  Professor  Ladd 
is  perfectly  willing  to  regard  as  ideal.  And  even  if  such  were  the  actual 
alternative,  it  is  not  made  evident  how  an  extraneous  tertium  quid  would 
help  matters  any. 

But  there  is  a  point  of  view  from  which  his  illustration  may  serve  to 
introduce  certain  interesting  possibilities  of  speculation.  How  do  we 
know  that  our  several  "presents"  coincide?  Even  if  it  be  necessary  to 
conclude  that  we  do  not  know  for  sure,  that  conclusion  would  be  no 
argument  for  Professor  Ladd's  view  of  an  objective  and  absolute  time, — 
at  least  not  until  he  explains  how  such  a  time  could  ever  be  known  in 
any  other  way  than  as  an  element  in  conscious  experience;  in  any  other 
case  the  puzzle  of  relativity  would  remain  and  the  external  Time  would 
be  only  an  additional  and  useless  burden.  As  he  has  not  done  this, 
we  shall  discuss  the  suggested  problem  in  its  bearing  on  the  view,  herein- 
set-forth,  omitting,  for  the  most  part,  its  relation  to  his  realism. 

In  the  first  place,  we  must  confess  to  serious  misgivings  as  to  whether 
the  question  has  any  assignable  meaning.  How  do  you  and  I  know  that 
our  conscious  time  series  coincide?  Now,  if  "coincide"  can  in  this 
case  have  any  other  than  a  temporal  significance  itself,  then  the  question 
has  meaning.  Does  the  question  mean  to  ask  whether  your  present 
and  mine  come  at  the  same  time}     If  so  it  is  purely  tautologous.     Of 

«  Theory  of  Reality,  p.  181. 
«  Ibid.,  p.  187. 
"  Ibid.,  p.  190. 


THE  RELATIVITY  OF  TIME  45 

course,  they  come  at  the  same  time,  viz.,  the  present!  One  asks,  "Is 
your  present  and  mine  necessarily  identical?"  Again  we  reply,  Does  the 
question  mean  to  ask  whether  a  given  event  will  be  present  for  you 
at  the  same  time  that  it  is  present  for  me?  If  so,  then  again  the  question 
is  self -contradictory  and  absurd.  But  I  am  not  sure  that  the  question 
necessarily  implies  a  temporal  basis  of  reckoning.  I  shall  assume  that 
it  is  possible  to  distinguish  a  factual  or  logical  coincidence  from  a  temporal 
one,  and  discuss  the  question  on  that  basis.  Of  course,  if  the  distinction 
I  refer  to  is  impossible,  then  the  question  is  absurd, — and  so  is  the 
reply!     But  for  the  present  I  shall  take  the  chances! 

What  reason  have  we  to  think  that  the  present  in  different  subjects 
should  coincide?  One's  answer  to  that  question  would  depend  very 
largely  upon  the  view  that  he  held  as  to  the  ultimate  nature  of  con- 
sciousness. We  may  consider  first  the  answer  that  one  would  give 
who  embraced  the  individualistic  notion  of  consciousness.  And  this 
notion,  by  the  way,  is  the  one  from  which  Professor  Ladd's  criticism 
comes:  he  speaks  of  events  as  "being  regarded  from  points  of  view  which 
are  wholly  subjective  and  so  disparate !"^^  Of  course,  if  personal  con- 
sciousness are  by  their  very  nature  "disparate,"  they  will  be  so  with 
regard  to  time  relations, — as  also  with  regard  to  all  other  relations  that 
one  could  mention.  But  even  on  the  individualistic  view  of  conscious- 
ness this  does  not  necessarily  follow  at  all.  He  does  not  think  of  such  a 
thing  in  reference  to  any  of  the  other  phases  of  experience  that  he  himself 
regards  as  being  relative  to  conscious  life  for  their  only  reality.  But  he, 
like  the  other  thinkers  of  his  school,  considers  that  finite  experiences  are 
coordinated  through  their  common  dependence  on  the  Worldground  or 
Absolute,  and  it  looks  as  if  time  relations  as  well  as  any  others  might  be 
so  coordinated. 

But  if  one  holds  that  consciousness  is  really,  in  its  very  existence 
and  structure,  a  social  continuum,  then  this  problem  is  perhaps  more 
easily  disposed  of.  The  world  of  experience,  according  to  this  view, 
acts  to  a  certain  extent  in  its  entirety,  and  the  present  for  my  conscious- 
ness would  naturally  coincide  with  the  present  determined  by  the  whole 
of  which  I  am  a  part.  However,  there  is  one  difficulty  even  here.  I 
may  be  a  part  of  a  social  consciousness,  but  it  is  certain  that  this  fact  is 
compatible  with  a  large  amount  of  individual  difference  on  my  part. 
Some  difference  even  seems  necessary  to  make  me  a  separate  person  at 
all.     Now,  if  my  experience  can  differ  in  some  ways  from  the  experience 

*'-  Theory  of  Reality,  p.  189. 


46  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

of  Others  in  my  group,  I  see  no  a  priori  reason  why  it  could  not  differ  in 
its  time  forms  as  well  as  in  the  form  of  other  relations.  So,  while  the  idea 
of  a  social  consciousness  perhaps  makes  coincident  time  relations  more 
probable,  it  does  not  entirely  settle  the  matter. 

We  have  said  "no  reason  why  not,"  and  "looks  as  if,"  etc.  May  we 
not  say  that  we  know  that  the  time  relations  of  all  our  consciousness  are 
identical?  I  do  not  see  how  one  could  make  good  such  an  assertion. 
One  is  reminded  of  Mr.  Bradley's  interesting  speculations  on  this  sub- 
ject.^^  Not  only  might  the  same  facts  be  related  in  reverse  order  by 
different  types  of  consciousness,  but  he  even  suggests  a  kind  of  magic 
square  arrangement,  on  which  time  relations  could  run  at  all  conceivable 
angles.  The  only  reason  I  know  of  for  not  thinking  that  such  perplexing 
disparity  is  real  is  that  there  is  no  assignable  reason  for  thinking  that  it 
is  so.     It  seems  to  me  in  every  respect  abstractly  possible. 

To  sum  up:  The  question  is  raised  whether,  if  time  be  only  a  way  of 
organizing  experience  and  not  an  ontological  entity  or  media,  the  time 
series  of  different  persons  might  not  be  quite  disparate.  We  answer 
that  it  might  indeed  be  so.  It  is  abstractly  possible.  But  it  cannot 
be  accepted  as  an  objection  to  the  present  view  for  the  simple  reason 
that  it  seems  to  be  "abstractly  possible"  on  any  view  of  consciousness 
or  any  view  of  time  whatever,  and  a  consideration  that  applies  to  any 
view  cannot  be  the  basis  of  discrimination  against  one  of  them. 


ARE  TIME  RELATIONS  UNIVERSAL  AND  NECESSARY? 

We  have  seen  reason  for  thinking  that  time  is,  at  least  for  us  and  our 
experience,  essentially  a  form  of  the  process  of  organizing  experience. 
This  does  not  mean  that  a  congeries  of  "immutable"  things  are  seized 
by  consciousness  and  related  in  a  temporal  way,  which  relation  at  the 
same  time  tells  us  nothing  as  to  the  nature  of  the  real  objects  related. 
This  would  be  to  get  back  to  the  obsolete  dinge-an-sich  of  Kant  to  which 
no  mental  functions  could  possibly  apply.  And  so  far  as  that  is  con- 
cerned, the  notion  of  immutabiHty  is,  just  as  much  as  the  correlative  one 
of  mutability,  a  temporal  affair  and  has  no  meaning  whatever  apart 
from  temporal  relations.  The  facts  of  our  experience  that  we  know  as 
successive  are  really,  not  merely  apparently,  so.     Their  temporal  rela- 

*'  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  216. 


ARE  TIME  RELATIONS  UNIVERSAL  AND  NECESSARY?  47 

tions  are  as  real  as  any  other  of  their  relations,  and  are  actual  features 
of  their  cosmic  existence.  But  still  the  temporal  relations  are  relations, 
and  can  be  real  only  when  the  relating  is  somehow  done;  and  can  be 
known,  we  have  held,  only  when  this  relating  is  a  constituent  factor  in 
the  activity  of  experience.  In  this  sense,  then,  time  is  assumed  to  be  a 
"form  of  organizing  experience." 

A  complete  statement  of  this  notion,  however,  necessitates  the  an- 
swering of  two  important  questions  that  will  immediately  suggest  them- 
selves. In  the  first  place.  Is  this  form  of  relating  a  universal  one  in 
experience?  and  in  the  second  place,  Is  it  a  necessary  form  of  all  possible 
experience?    These  we  shall  take  up  in  order. 

When  we  say  "universal,"  do  we  mean  that  one  is  always  conscious 
of  the  before-after  relations  in  experience?  If  the  proposition  can  be 
stated  in  so  simple  a  form  as  that,  then  the  answer  seems  equally  simple 
and  easy, — The  time  relation  is  not  always  present  in  consciousness. 
Whether  the  feeling  of  satisfaction  at  the  thought  of  having  a  thousand 
dollars  in  the  bank  is  or  is  not  a  state  of  mind  in  which  time  considera- 
tions are  absent,  still,  in  the  transport  of  artistic  appreciation,  in  the 
moment  of  contemplative  absorption,  in  the  spell  of  sudden  insight, 
we  see  states  in  which  the  sense  of  time  is  practically  submerged;  some 
such  experiences  seem  to  possess  other  aspects  of  such  vital  and  intrinsic 
worth  that  the  mind  is  blinded  to  their  temporal  importance  or  bearing. 
In  these  cases,  if  the  temporal  relations  are  there,  they  are  at  least  not 
consciously  there;  they  must  he  in  some  entirely  different  stratum  of 
reality  than  the  one  that  is  then  lit  up  by  the  light  of  consciousness. 

Indeed  if,  as  Kant  insisted,  time  is  the  "formal  a  priori  condition 
of  all  phenomena  without  exception, "^°  we  seem  bound  to  modify  the 
statement  in  at  least  one  very  important  respect.  Not  only  do  we  have, 
as  just  pointed  out,  many  common  experiences  in  which  the  relation  is 
not  consciously  or  explicitly  present,  but  modern  psychology  forces  us 
to  deny  that  it  could  be  in  the  same  way  and  to  the  same  degree  an  element 
in  every  experience ;  if  it  were  it  would  be  impossible  for  us  ever  to  know  it 
at  all.  In  such  a  case  it  would,  in  a  very  short  while,  get  to  be  a  "time- 
subconsciousness"  and  finally  a  "time-unconsciousness," — if  one  may 
pardon  for  the  moment  the  ascription  of  ideal  content  known  as  such 
to  an  unconscious  element  in  experience.  In  other  words,  in  order  to 
come  to  recognize  the  presence  of  the  time  element  at  all,  it  must  vary 
its  role  to  some  extent,  and  moreover,  it  will  be  known  just  to  the  extent 

'•°  Criliquc  of  Pure  Reason  (Miiller  Tr.),  p.  27. 


48  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

to  which  it  does  so.  It  has  long  been  a  truism  in  psychology"  that  an 
absolutely  invariable  phenomenon  would  be  beyond  the  reach  of  con- 
scious discrimination.  We  must  therefore  insist  that,  if  indeed  it  be 
present  in  every  experience,  it  is  at  least  not  equally  present  in  every 
state,  and  this  seems  to  me  to  be  giving  up  the  whole  contention  in 
principle  in  that,  in  such  an  admission,  it  is  virtually  conceded  that  its 
reality  in  experience  is  a  function  of  the  relating  process  which  varies  with 
the  nature  of  the  material  related  and  the  sort  of  purpose  in  hand. 

It  is  simply  a  fact  that  experience,  when  considered  from  the  stand- 
point of  its  purposiveness,  may  always  be  related  in  temporal  form. 
Now  if  anyone  chooses  to  insist  that  that  standpoint  may  always  be 
taken  with  reference  to  any  experience  whatever,  there  is  no  apparent 
reason  for  calling  the  statement  in  question, — except  the  fact  that  it  is 
wholly  gratuitous.  It  amounts  to  saying  that  there  is  a  time- 
consciousness  "potential"  in  every  experience.  But  the  fact  seems  to  re- 
main that  the  potentiality  is  not  always  realized, — that,  so  to  speak,  the 
time  aspect  is  not  invariably  exposed  when,  by  the  conscious  process 
of  organizing  experience,  the  insulation  of  settled,  mechanical,  subcon- 
scious tendency  is  burned  through. 

Having  granted  that  it  may  always  be  a  "potential"  aspect,  at  least, 
of  all  conscious  states  (and  there  are  always  difficulties  lurking  in  that 
word  "potential")  shall  we  say  with  Kant  that  it  is  a  foregone  necessity 
that  such  should  be  the  case?  In  other  words,  is  it  inconceivable  that 
there  should  be  such  a  thing  as  experience  without  this  aspect?  I  do 
not  think  that  it  is,  and  for  the  following  reasons: 

(1)  The  modern  philosopher  no  longer  tries  to  deduce  the  categories 
(time  being  one)  from  the  something-nothing,  being-nonbeing  premise 
of  the  Hegelian  dialectic.  At  most,  one  could  only  point  out  that  time 
is  a  very  elemental  factor  in  experience  as  it  is  for  us, — he  could  not  show 
it  to  be  in  any  sense  a  logical  necessity,  flowing  from  the  very  nature  of 
reason  itself.  But  if  such  be  the  case,  there  is  another  side  to  the  ques- 
tion. Experience  seems  to  be  compatible  with  a  vast  variety  of  change 
and  difference,  and  it  is  quite  impossible  to  say  that  the  nonreality  of 
the  time  form  would  completely  over-step  the  line  of  cosmic  alternative 
and  render  experience  utterly  impossible  and  the  very  conception  of  it 
absurd. 

(2)  Kant  calls  it  "a  priori."  Is  this  not  true?  Indeed,  there  is 
a  sense  in  which  this  conclusion  seems  certain.  The  English  sensation- 
alists failed  hopelessly  in  their  attempt  to  shake  up  "mere  sensations" 
in  a  hat  and  draw  thereout  a  full-fledged  time  consciousness.    Time, 


ARE  TIME  RELATIONS  UNIVERSAL  AND  NECESSARY?  49 

whatever  else  it  be,  is  not  an  aggregate  of  mere  sensations  of  any  sort 
nor  of  assorted  sensations  of  all  sorts.  It  is  a  form  of  active  synthesis 
of  the  elements  of  experience  into  intelligible  wholes.  In  this  sense  it  is 
a  priori;  and  this  is  one  great  meaning  that  Kant  gave  to  that  word. 
But  it  is  not  a  priori  in  another  sense  in  which  Kant  himself  seems  at 
times  to  use  the  word.  The  proposition  that  experience  should  be  tem- 
poral in  character  is  not  one  that  overwhelms  the  mind  with  an  irrcsis- 
tably  axiomatic  force,  nor  can  it  be  deduced  from  any  such  axioms. 
In  this  sense  it  seems  to  be  as  contingent  as  is  the  space  form  in  our 
consciousness  of  the  world. 

(3)  At  this  point  the  proposition  may  come  back  in  a  slightly 
altered  form.  Kant  urges  one  to  try  to  banish  the  time  relation  from 
his  "intuition"  and  just  see  if  he  can  do  it!  The  experimenter  will  find, 
we  are  told,  that  whereas  he  can  think  away  any  and  all  objects  from 
space,  he  cannot  think  space  itself  away;  and,  in  like  manner,  whereas 
the  mind  can  do  away  with  any  particular  event,  or  all  particular  events, 
still  he  cannot  think  away  the  fact  of  duration  itself; — i.  e.,  that  while 
no  concrete  event  seems  to  be  essential  to  the  reality  of  the  world  and  the 
vaUdity  of  knowledge,  the  fact  of  time  itself  is  such  an  absolute  pre- 
requisite. As  he  says,  "Time  is  a  necessary  idea  which  is  presupposed 
in  all  perceptions.  We  cannot  be  conscious  of  phenomena  if  time  is 
taken  away,  although  we  can  quite  readily  suppose  phenomena  to  be 
absent  from  time.  Time  is,  therefore,  given  a  priori. "^^  And  again, 
"While,  therefore,  phenomena  may  be  supposed  to  vanish  completely 
out  of  time,  time  itself,  as  the  universal  condition  of  their  possibiUty, 
cannot  be  supposed  away."^^ 

To  this  argument  several  repHes  may  be  made : 

(1)  It  is  somewhat  of  a  puzzle  to  see  what  duration  would  be  like 
in  which  nothing  endured.  If  we  are,  as  a  sheer  matter  of  fact,  still 
conscious  of  duration  after  we  have  tried  to  clear  consciousness  of  all 
sense  of  things  and  events  and  change,  is  it  not  more  legitimate  to  con- 
clude that  we  have  not  really  washed  the  slate  clean  of  concrete  facts, 
than  to  insist  that  we  have  time  left  as  an  omnipresent,  though  empty, 
reality?  According  to  Kant's  own  analysis,  space  and  time  are  only 
"forms"  of  intuition,  and  both  form  and  "matter"  are  organically 
necessary  to  any  consciousness  whatever.  To  intuite  empty  time  when 
all  temporal  facts  have  been  unconditionally  dismissed  from  conscious- 
ness is,  if  the  critical  conception  of  knowledge  has  any  truth  in  it  at  all, 

"  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  (Miiller  Tr.),  p.  24. 
"  Ihid.,  p.  25. 


50  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

a  contradiction  in  terms.  Indeed  one  is  tempted  to  quote  Kant's 
own  aphorism  that  while  matter  without  form  is  bhnd,  form  without 
matter  is  empty.  The  only  objection  one  might  have  to  quoting  it 
in  this  connection  is  that  some  reader  might  not  notice  the  pun  on  the 
word  "empty"  as  used  in  these  different  expressions.  Of  course,  the 
very  point  we  are  trying  to  make  is  that  it  is  impossible  to  be  conscious 
of  empty  time  (on  the  Kantian  hypothesis  at  least),  while  the  quotation 
seems  to  say  that  form  without  content  is  empty!  However,  I  suppose  it 
is  evident  enough  that  the  word  is  used  once  in  a  logical,  and  once  in  a 
purely  descriptive  way.  In  other  words,  the  judgment  "Empty  time 
exists  and  stands  in  relation  to  my  consciousness  at  least  to  the  extent 
that  I  know  its  existence,"  is  by  no  means  empty  in  the  sense  of  being 
without  logical  content.  And  according  to  the  Kritik,  it  is  just  this  judg- 
ment that  would  be  impossible.  Kant  himself,  in  another  place,  takes 
approximately  the  same  position.  He  says:  "There  is  no  way  of  proving 
from  experience  that  there  is  empty  space  or  empty  time.  For,  in  the 
first  place,  the  complete  absence  of  reaUty  from  a  perception  of  sense 
can  never  be  observed;  and,  in  the  second  place,  the  absence  of  all  reality 
can  never  be  inferred  from  any  variation  in  the  degree  of  reality  of  a 
phenomenon,  nor  ought  it  ever  to  be  brought  forward  in  explanation  of 
that  variation. "^^  In  other  words,  the  knowing  consciousness  could 
not  "apply"  the  time  form  without  something  to  apply  it  to, — i.  e., 
without  some  concrete  content.  But  it  must  be  evident  that  this 
consideration,  so  well  stated  by  Kant  himself,  completely  undermines  his 
former  attempt  to  prove  that  time  is  a  necessary  and  universal  form  of 
experience,  since  the  argument  there  is,  "We  cannot  be  conscious  of 
phenomena  if  time  is  taken  away,  although  we  can  quite  readily  sup- 
pose phenomona  to  be  absent  from  time."  The  fact  is  that  duration  in 
which  nothing  endures,  or  time  in  which  there  are  no  real  occurrences, 
looks  suspiciously  like  an  orbit  in  which  there  is  no  planet  or  a  forest  de- 
prived of  its  trees. 

Of  course,  the  discussion  here  applies  only  to  Kant's  attempted 
proof  that  time  is  a  necessary  and  universal  form  of  experience,  and 
appeals  to  his  distinction  of  the  form  and  content  of  experience,  the 
truth  of  which  distinction  we  are  not  aiming  to  discuss.  The  only 
question  here  raised  is  the  one  of  consistency  within  his  own  arguments. 
And  we  hold  that  if  it  is  possible  to  think  all  facts  and  events  away, 
but  impossible  to  get  away  from  the  consciousness  of  time  itself  (even 

w  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  (Miiller  Tr.l,  p.  141. 


ARE  TIME  RELATIONS  UNIVERSAL  AND  NECESSARY?  51 

as  SO  emptied),  then  while  this  might  show  time  to  be  a  necessary  phase 
of  experience,  it  would  at  the  same  time  invalidate  Kant's  own  more 
general  conclusions. 

(2)  To  test  whether  or  not  time  is  a  necessary  form  of  experience, 
we  must  not  fix  up  for  ourselves  an  experiment  that  is  itself  a  rational  con- 
tradiction and  then,  failing  to  make  any  headway  at  it,  conclude  that 
time  is  therefore  an  inevitable  relation  in  the  world.  Professor  Fuller- 
ton"  has  long  ago  pointed  out  that  most  people,  to  test  the  inevitableness 
of  the  space  form,  try  to  imagine  what  is  in  the  space  beyond  the  limits 
of  space,  or  what  would  exist  in  the  place  of  space  if  it  were  away, — 
when  "place"  and  "away"  and  "limits"  and  "beyond",  etc.,  are  all 
spatial  terms  and  presuppose  the  reaUty  of  space  for  their  only  con- 
ceivable application.  Similarly,  in  order  to  satisfy  ourselves  that  time 
is  a  necessary  form  of  all  intuition,  it  will  hardly  do  simply  to  try  to 
imagine  what  an  interval  would  be  like  in  which  there  was  no  time,  when 
all  the  terms  of  the  problem  are  thus  temporal  in  meaning  and  when 
it  is  obviously  a  foregone  conclusion  that  we  could  find  no  nontem- 
porality    there. 

(3)  And  finally  there  is  another  reason  why  so  simple  an  operation 
as  merely  thinking  time  away  offers  little  hope  of  demonstrating  any- 
thing. The  trouble  is  that  in  such  an  effort  attention  stands  in  its  own 
light.  We  try  to  abstract  the  time  element  entirely  from  experience  and 
then  see  what  is  left,  and  it  is  evident  that  such  a  procedure  merely 
makes  the  temporal  aspect  the  chief  thing  to  be  dealt  with  rather  than 
an  omitted  consideration.  It  is  something  like  trying  to  press  the  pain 
out  of  a  boil;  the  pressure  only  heightens  its  emphatic  presence.  It  is 
a  familiar  fact  that  the  only  way  to  drive  a  given  element  from  con- 
sciousness is  to  center  attention  really,  not  merely  ostensibly,  on  some- 
thing else.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  more  we  try  to  make  the-world- 
minus-its-time-aspect  the  object  of  consciousness,  the  more  sure  we  are 
to  find  that  the  time  consideration  that  is  thus  made  an  integral  part  of 
our  object  has  all  the  earmarks  of  the  time  relation  when  the  latter 
is  applied  to  any  other  object  in  consciousness.  In  other  words, 
the  experiment  might  succeed,  if  at  all,  only  when  the  time  relation  was 
wholly  submerged  by  other  interests, — that  is,  in  a  state  of  mind  abso- 
lutely antipodal  to  that  of  the  suggested  experiment.  Indeed,  if  one  be 
fond  of  paradox,  he  may  put  it  thus:  that  the  less  one  tries  the  experi- 
ment the  more  probable  is  his  success;  or,  the  more  the  present  aim  is 
unrelated  to,  and  disparate  with,  the  object  and  aim  of  the  experiment, 
the  more  liable  is  the  object  of  the  latter  to  be  reaUzed. 

"  Introduction  to  Philosophy,  p.  76. 


52  SOME  VIEWS  or  the  time  problem 

We  are  not,  therefore,  surprised  that  Kant  failed  to  think  time 
away  as  easily  as  to  neglect  this  or  that  concrete  event  in  the  temporal 
series.  And  we  suspect  that  the  "time"  he  still  found  on  his  hands 
after  he  had  "supposed  phenomena  to  be  absent  from  time",  was  really 
a  very  complex  stream  of  events,  even  though  these  events  were  only 
respiratory  movements,  heart  beats,  artery  pulse  in  ears,  neck,  forehead, 
etc.  and  all  the  other  trooping  shadows  of  cutaneous  and  organic  sensa- 
tion that  flit  across  the  stage  of  consciousness  in  the  dim  light  of  quiet 
contemplation,  but  which  ordinarily  elude  our  definite  grasp.  It  is 
not  so  true  to  say  that  the  time  form  is  inevitable,  as  that  one  can  always 
find  events  if  he  is  conscious  enough  to  look  for  them,  or,  which  is  the 
same  thing,  that  experience  is  always  relatable  in  a  temporal  way  when 
we  choose  to  view  it  in  that  aspect. 

We  conclude  (1)  that  there  is  no  available  proof  that  time  is  either 
universal  or  necessary  as  a  form  of  experience.  (2)  That  it  is  safe  to 
hold  that  it  is  not  universal  in  the  sense  of  being  equally  present  in 
every  experience  for  (a)  there  seem  to  be  some  experiences  in  which 
it  is  nearly,  if  not  quite,  absent,  and  (b)  it  could  not  be  known  as  an 
element  in  experience  if  it  were  equally  present  in  every  increment  of 
that  experience.  And  (3)  that,  while  it  is  impossible  to  prove  that  it 
is  not  at  least  implicitly  or  potentially  present  in  all  experience,  still 
it  is  equally  impossible  to  prove  that  it  is  necessarily  there,  and  the  burden 
of  proof  would  seem  to  lie  with  the  afi&rmative. 

Therefore,  although  time  and  change,  like  space  and  extension, 
are  very  real  in  experience,  we  hold  that  their  presence  is  as  contingent 
as  it  is  real.  Can  we,  then,  imagine  an  experience  the  factors  of  which 
would  be  related  in  ways  wholly  different  in  form  from  space  and  time? 
No  since,  by  hypothesis,  that  is  a  form  of  conscious  construction  that 
is  as  yet  entirely  foreign  to  us.  If  we  are  unable  to  relate  our  direct 
concrete  experience  in  such  hypothetical  ways,  it  stands  to  reason  that, 
under  the  same  hmitations,  we  would  not  be  able  to  re-present  such 
relations  to  consciousness  in  terms  of  images  instead.  But,  in  saying 
that  space  and  time  are  contingent,  we  mean  simply  that  there  is  no 
a  priori  reason  for  thinking  that  these  are  the  only  possible  laws  in  terms 
of  which  experience  can  ever  be  serially  organized.  And  the  negative 
conceivability  of  such  now  unknown  elaboration  of  experience  material 
is  in  no  way  precluded  by  our  mere  inability  to  picture  such  a  state  of 
affairs  in  concrete  terms.  With  the  growing  complexity  of  experience, 
and  our  increasing  grasp  on  it  and  control  of  it,  some  very  unpredictable 
things  might  come  to  pass. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  53 

TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME 

Having  indicated  in  the  foregoing  our  general  attitude  toward  the 
time  problem,  we  shall  now  turn  to  a  more  interesting  task, — that  of 
presenting  in  outline  the  views  of  time  held  by  two  of  the  great  repre- 
sentative philosophers  of  the  present,  Professors  Eucken  and  Bergson. 
These  two  are  chosen,  not  only  because  of  their  intrinsic  importance, 
but  also  because  they  seem  to  stand  at  the  opposite  poles  of  the  dis- 
cussion. While  one  regards  the  temporal  as  an  inferior  aspect  of  reality, 
the  other  makes  "real"  time  the  deepest  fact  in  existence.  Our  chief 
interest,  therefore,  is  in  the  comparison  of  the  two  views,  rather  than 
primarily  in  the  content  of  either. 


For  Professor  Eucken  the  problem  of  philosophy  is  at  bottom  a  moral 
and  religious  one.  The  major  premise  of  all  his  arguments  is  this: 
"Human  life  has  a  significance,  an  inner  worth  and  value  of  its  own," 
Any  world  view,  any  way  of  thinking,  that  does  not  make  room  for  such 
real  value,  stands  self-condemned.  To  be  sure,  it  is  not  on  this  basis 
that  metaphysical  schools  are  wont  to  debate  their  views,  but  it  is  this 
reference  to  life,  rather  than  to  logic,  that  will  ultimately  decide  between 
them.  A  naturahsm,  for  instance,  may  be  as  logically  consistent  as  a 
medieval  discussion  of  angels  (and  the  Scholastics  knew  how  to  be 
logically  consistent!)  but  if  it  construes  the  striving,  the  sorrows,  the 
loves,  the  ideals  of  humanity  as  sheer  swirls  of  atoms  or  vortices,  or  as 
simply  highly  complicated  organic  chemistry,  then  that  system  of  thought 
with  all  its  logical  sparkle  is  doomed,  sooner  or  later,  to  a  place  in  the 
rubbish  heap  with  the  other.  If  our  thought  world  is  too  small  and 
cramped  for  the  soul's  needs,  then  the  living  soul  will  surely  break  it 
down.^^  And  conversely,  if  life,  in  order  to  reach  its  highest,  fullest 
expression,  is  forced  to  break  the  bonds  of  any  system  of  thinking  what- 
ever, then  that  is  proof  absolute  that  that  system  was  untrue.  That  is, 
in  a  way  his  test  of  truth  is  the  pragmatic  test,  though  his  definition 
of  truth,  as  we  shall  see  later,  is  a  thoroughly  absolutist  one.^*"  And 
this  test  he  applies  fearlessly  to  the  philosophies  of  the  schools,  to  the 
creeds  and  concepts  of  the  churches,  to  the  ideals  of  whole  culture  move- 
ments.    Each  is  brought  before  the  bar  and  asked,  "If  given  complete 

^''  Hauptprobleme  der  Religionsphilosophie  der  Gegenwart,  pp.  58,  69,  etc. 
*"  Geistige  Stromungen  der  Gegenwart,  p.  49. 


54  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

control,  will  you  expand  or  contract  the  meaning  of  life,  ennoble  or 
cheapen  it?"  Human  life  feels  the  throb  of  spiritual  power;  human 
philosophy  must  give  it  room! 

That  such  considerations  actually  do  decide  the  fate  of  philosophical 
conceptions  on  the  field  of  history  no  one,  probably,  will  feel  disposed 
to  doubt.  Professor  Eucken  says,  not  merely  that  they  do,  but  that 
they  should  and  must.  If  one  refuses  to  accept  this  major  premise, 
then  Professor  Eucken's  work  is  for  him  a  stumbling-block  only;  to 
one  who  does  accept  it,  his  work  may  be  a  revelation.  His  general 
conclusion  reached  by  following  the  method  here  indicated  is  that  every 
detail  in  the  world's  history  receives  its  value,  as  well  as  its  very  being, 
from  the  unseen  world  of  the  "  Geistesleben"  which  includes  and  encom- 
passes the  whole  series  in  a  profounder  unity, — that,  through  its  non- 
temporal  presence  to  all  the  parts,  organizes  the  otherwise  hopeless 
multiplicity  of  temporal  succession  into  a  living  Whole.  It  is  this  Pres- 
ence in  the  very  heart  of  man  that  makes  his  life  more  than  a  mere 
succession  of  events, — that  raises  it  everlastingly  above  the  mere  rattle 
of  mechanical  change;  this,  too,  is  the  transcendent  Source  and  final 
Measure  of  the  Good,  the  Beautiful,  and  the  True.  Our  present  interest 
in  this  conception  is,  of  course,  not  so  much  in  the  existence  of  the 
"Geistesleben,"  as  in  its  nontemporal  character,  although  it  must  be 
added  that  this  characteristic  is  the  preeminent  one  in  the  teaching  of 
Professor  Eucken  himself.  We  shall  proceed  to  give  as  briefly  as  possible 
his  reasons  for  thinking  that  our  consciousness,  however  much  it  may 
enter  into  the  series  of  temporal  events,  still  has  its  roots  in  a  timeless 
world  of  Life. 


First  and  most  important  of  all,  is  the  repeated  and  reiterated  con- 
tention that  the  ultimately  temporal  character  of  reality  would  be  utterly 
inconsistent  with  the  integrity  of  moral"  life.  In  order,  in  other  words, 
for  life  to  have  moral  meaning,  it  must  be  lifted  above  the  level  of  mere 
events;  it  must  link  itself  to  a  world  that  is  higher  than  mere  men, — 
a  world  that  is  in  some  way  a  Hving  Whole.  While  both  may  do  good, 
an  act  of  deliberate  self-sacrifice  differs  from  a  thunder  shower  in  some 
high  and  ultimate  way.  Both,  as  temporal  events,  vanish  with  the 
moments  in  which  they  occur,  and  those  moments,  in  the  one  case  as 

*'  Geistige  Stromungen  der  Gegenwart,  pp.  322-403,  especially  322-340;  Der  Sinn  und 
Wert  des  Lebens,  entire. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  55 

much  as  in  the  other,  are  infinitely  divisible  and  tend  to  vanish  completely 
when  we  search  for  the  fraction  that  has  a  present,  real  existence;  both, 
too,  are,  in  their  occurrence,  parts  of  the  web  of  mechanical  causation 
and  change.  Yet  there  is  another  side  to  the  question.  The  one  has  a 
meaning  that  does  not  vanish  with  the  moment;  it  has  a  content  that, 
somehow,  is  not  infinitely  divisible  but  is,  rather,  organized  as  the 
expression  of  a  single  purpose;  it  is  bound  in  the  chain  of  causation  but 
its  essential  ground  was  an  "ought"  that  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  link 
in  such  a  chain.  In  other  words,  the  one  was  moral,  the  other  was  not. 
Of  course,  it  may  be  replied,  nobody  denies  that  a  moral  fact  has 
something  about  it  that  distinguishes  it  from  facts  that  are  not;  so  has 
any  general  class  of  things  to  which  we  are  able  to  apply  any  distinguish- 
ing name.  But  it  is  not,  on  that  account,  involved  necessarily  in  any 
puzzles  of  timelessness.  Indeed,  so  far  as  its  purposiveness  is  concerned, 
that  would  even  seem  to  stamp  it  as  doubly  temporal,  since  the  very 
essence  of  purpose  is  the  "forward  look"— a  temporal  affair  surely,  and 
a  relation,  too,  that  all  temporal  events  do  not  obviously  possess. 

As  opposed  to  this,  however,  it  is  Professor  Eucken's  specific  point 
that  the  very  characteristics  that  make  an  event  moral  require  that  it 
have  a  part  in  a  time-transcending  whole.  Of  course,  a  being,  even  to 
be  perfectly  moral,  would  not  pull  away  completely  from  the  stream  of 
time  and  simply  rest  in  the  Eternal  Quiet.  Time  is  not  a  contaminating 
evil  that  detracts  from  moral  value;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  the  field  where 
moral  acts,  like  any  others,  must  find  their  place  if  they  are  to  be  real. 
But  they  must  not  stop  with  that.  A  fact  that  completely  loses  itself  in 
the  temporal  flow  is  gone  when  those  particular  moments  of  time  are 
gone  and  its  relation  to  succeeding  moments  is  at  best  only  that  of  cause 
and  effect,  precisely  like  that  of  the  thunder  storm.  And  furthermore, 
the  moments  of  conscious  events,  just  as  much  as  any  other  moments, 
are  as  such  different,  mutually  exclusive.  Temporal  things  are  literally, 
as  James  says,  "strung  along";  the  time  relationship  of  before-and-after 
is  itself  the  disintegrating  element  that  makes  an  infinite  mvdtiplicity 
out  of  any  content  whatsoever  that  it  may  have. 

Indeed  the  case  here  is  exactly  similar  to  the  spatial  difficulty  referred 
to  above.  No  one  in  the  throes  of  life's  crises  can  possil)ly  convince 
himself  that  all  that  is  going  on  is  a  wonderfully  complex  performance 
of  countless  separate  spatial  atoms.  His  feeling  of  unity,  of  responsi- 
bility, of  self,  of  personality  resists  all  argument;  he  knows  that  some- 
how an  individual  destiny  is  working  itself  out  in  his  immediate  neigh- 
borhood.    It  may  be  ever  so  closely  associated  with  the  atoms  but  it  is 


56  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

not,  cannot  be,  identical  with  them.  Nor,  indeed,  can  it  be  a  spatial 
something  that  envelopes  them.  Space  is  divisible  and  geometrical, 
but  his  consciousness  of  present  strain  and  choice  is  not  something 
that  has  shape  or  size,  or  can  be  cut  into  fractions  spatially.  And  just 
as  consciousness  will  not  submit  to  being  stretched  out  spatially  over  the 
mutual  externality  of  spatial  points,  so  it  resists  all  efforts  to  being 
"strung  out"  in  time.  The  conscious  self  has  a  unity  that  atoms  in 
spatial  arrangement  cannot  have  and,  just  as  surely,  it  has  an  identity 
that  successive  moments  can  never  possess.  Nor  is  the  self  a  sort  of 
temporal  continuity, — a  string  on  which  the  moments  of  time  may  be 
held  together;  for,  however  indiscernibly  small  may  be  the  intervals, 
they  are  still  intervals.  We  can  never  hope  to  get  them  so  short  that 
they  would  cease  to  be  quantitative, — i.  e.,  divisible.  From  every  side 
the  "  nacheinander"  of  the  parts  of  time  turns  out  to  be  just  as  destructive 
as  the  "  nebeneinander"  of  the  parts  of  space,  to  any  reality  of  a  unitary  or 
identical  nature  supposed  to  exist  in  it.  And  if  a  moral  act,  or  a  moral 
life,  has  inner  organization  and  coherence,  then  this  very  character,  which 
the  thunder  storm  does  not  have,  is  something  completely  counter 
to  the  hopeless  diversity  of  the  temporal  process, — something  that,  in 
its  own  might,  defies  the  pulverizing  wheels  of  time.  "Nur  so  lange 
ist  fiir  den  Einzelnen  das  Dasein  eine  rastlose  Flucht  von  Erscheinungen, 
ale  er  eines  selbstandigen  Innenlebens  cntbehrt,  nicht  irgendwie  zu 
einem  Ganzen  personlichen  Seins  und  geistiger  Individual! tat  gelangt."^** 
Similarly  with  regard  to  the  "ought"  that  is  the  ground  of  moral 
conduct.  This  fact  is  in  a  sense  a  part  of  the  cause  of  the  moral  act, — 
"cause"  in  the  sense  that  few  if  any  (Kant  says  none  at  all)  moral  acts 
would  exist  if  it  did  not  exist.  But  it  is  not  a  cause  in  the  sense  of  being 
a  temporal  antecedent.  Indeed,  if  it  were  it  could  never  characterize 
the  moral  act  as  such,  but  only  its  antecedents.  It  would  be  a  strange 
sort  of  duty  that  always  dropped  out  of  existence  just  before  its  fulfillment 
And  yet  that  is  just  what  the  antecedents  of  an  event  do.  No,  "ought" 
is  a  relationship  to  the  whole  of  life, — a  whole  that  cannot  squeeze  itself 
into  the  narrowness  of  a  passing  moment,  though  it  may  give  that  moment 
its  inner  character.  Indeed,  it  might  be  taken  as  an  interesting  commen- 
tary on  this  view  of  duty  that  the  English  word  "ought"  is  tenseless. 

While  we  still  center  our  attention  on  the  individual  rather  than 
upon  history  as  a  whole,  we  may  cite,  as  another  reason  for  asserting 
the  existence  of  this  time-transcending  Spirit,  the  fact  of  knowledge. 

^'  Geist.  Strom.,  p.  270. 


TWO   mrORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  57 

An  act  of  knowledge,  like  a  moral  purpose,  is  inconceivable  under  any 
conditions  that  do  not  permit  of  inner  organization  and  unity.  The 
subject-object  relation,  for  instance,  cannot  be  a  simple  spatial  otherness. 
To  be  sure,  the  object  of  our  perception  may  be  a  spatial  object,  but  its 
role  as  object  is  something  completely  over  and  above  the  fact  that  it  is 
spatially  before  our  eyes.  To  know  it  we  somehow  or  other  make  it  our 
own;  it  becomes  a  part  of  the  immediate  content  of  consciousness, — 
which  would  be  quite  impossible  if  its  relation  to  us  were  determined  by, 
or  constituted  from,  the  thorough-going  mutual  externality  of  the  parts 
of  space.  But  if  there  is  in  and  above  the  spatial  screen  an  all-containing 
principle  to  which  the  objects  of  the  world  are  immediately  present, 
then  the  presence  of  that  principle  in  the  consciousness  of  the  knower 
makes  it  possible  that  the  separations  and  oppositions  involved  in  spatial 
otherness  should  be  overcome. ^^ 

And  now,  in  a  precisely  similar  sense,  is  a  transcendence  of  some 
sort  necessary  in  order  to  nullify  the  disintegrating  character  of  succession. 
The  moments  of  a  judging  act  are  not  mutually  distinct  links  in  a  causal 
chain;  the  predicate  is  not  the  result  of  the  subject,  nor  the  subject  the 
mere  temporal  antecedent  of  the  predicate.  In  other  words,  the  quan- 
titative, infinitely  divisible  character  of  time  cuts  the  knowledge  act 
into  impossible  fractions  just  as  surely  as  would  the  dominance  in  it  of  the 
fact  of  extension, — except  that  the  time  relationship,  as  it  were,  cuts  it 
through  another  dimension,  or  parallel  to  a  different  plane.  Either 
type  of  multiplicity  would  be  disastrous  to  knowledge  were  not  the  life 
of  the  soul  superior  to  the  phantasmagoria  of  time.  "Das  Seelenleben 
in  ein  Nebeneinander  einzelner  Bewusstseinsvorgange  auflosen,  das 
heisst  alien  innern  Zusammenhang  preisgeben  und  damit  auch  die 
Moglichkeit  einer  Wissenshaft  von  Grund  aus  zerstoren."^'' 

And  this  relation  to  knowledge  is  perhaps  seen  best  of  all  in  the 
character  of  truth.  Professor  Eucken  is  well  aware  that  the  nature  of 
truth  is  not  an  undebatable  postulate  in  these  days  of  philosophical 
renovation.  But  leaving  to  one  side,  so  far  as  possible,  the  question 
as  to  whether  or  not  truth  is  instrumental  (On  this  point  he  says  in  a 
somewhat  ambiguous  way  "Die  Wahrheit  aber  ist  nicht  ein  blosses 
Mittel  zur  Erhohung  dieses  Lebens,  sondern  sie  gehort  zu  seinem  Wes- 
en.")^^  it  is  perhaps  possible  for  all  to  agree  at  least  in  this,  that  the  truth 
fact  is  not  a  sort  of  coincident  whirr  that  accompanies  states  of  conscious- 

^'  Geist.  Strom.,  pp.  12,  35,  etc. 
«"  Geist.  Strom.,  p.  120. 
"  Ihid.,  p.  35. 


58  SOME  VIEWS  or  the  time  problem 

ness  now  and  then,  having,  like  the  latter,  duration  and  mutability.  No, 
perhaps  that  is  overstepping  somewhat  the  limits  of  what  is  commonly 
agreed  upon  but  to  our  author  such  a  statement  is  of  self-evident  truth. 
To  ask  whether  a  judgment  is  true  or  false  is  not  to  inquire  concerning 
its  temporal  relationships;  it  is  not  to  ask  what  sort  of  events  preceded  or 
followed  or  accompanied  it,  although  these  may  serve  as  evidence  as  to 
whether  the  truth  is  there.  In  fact,  even  the  most  ardent  exponents  of 
such  a  view  as  we  are  now  discussing  make  the  truth  as  little  as  possible 
a  direct  time  function.  It  is  a  utility  function  primarily  and  temporal 
only  secondarily,  through  the  fact  that  the  use  of  the  new  synthesis 
whose  truth  is  in  question  requires  time.  I  mean  that,  to  find  the  truth 
of  a  judgment,  even  Mr.  Schiller  would  presumably  not  ask  at  exactly 
what  o'clock  the  thought  occurred,  or  how  many  minutes  it  endured, 
although  he  would  say  that  if  it  were  never  drafted  into  active  service 
it  would  have  no  relationship  to  truth  or  falsity  either  one.  But  unless 
one  be  singularly  free  from  established  systematic  prejudices,  it  must 
seem  to  him  that  the  kaleidoscopic  shifting  of  scenes,  the  momentary 
flashing  into  being  and  dying  out  again  of  events  in  the  narrow  field 
of  the  present,  furnishes  no  adequate  ground  for  the  fixing  of  truth.  In 
the  opinion  of  our  author,  the  bewildering  shuffle  of  this  radical  rela- 
tivism can  only  be  overcome  through  an  appeal  to  a  time-spanning  World 
of  Spirit  whose  structure  is  not  shaken  by  the  vicissitudes  of  time. 
While  he  holds,  to  be  sure,  that  truth  is  not  a  passive  intellectual  posses- 
sion, but  rather,  for  us,  an  achievement  that  means  much  driving  effort 
and  perhaps  even  suffering,  yet  the  truth  is  not,  cannot  be,  constituted  by 
such  struggle.®^  Indeed,  on  the  contrary,  there  may  be  vast  ranges  of 
truth  that  have  never  yet  found  expression  in  the  temporal  field  of 
"warring  elements,"  and  yet  truth,  when  we  do  possess  it,  is  just  the 
presence  of  this  ultimate  self-equal  Life  in  the  striving,  inner  souls  of 
men.^^  Truth  does  not  come  into  being  through  the  simple  formulating 
of  it  any  more  than  the  objects  revealed  by  the  sweep  of  a  searchlight 
are  created  by  the  simple  shining  of  its  rays.  The  unseen  world  of  the 
Geistesleben  constitutes  just  this  solid  ground  of  truth;  it  is  this  that  forms 
the  essence  of  every  real  fact  of  knowledge;  it  is  this  that  occasionally 
strikes  fire  in  the  clashing  conflicts  of  human  conviction,  and  lights  the 
way  of  progress.^ 

"  Haupiprobleme,  p.  45. 
"  Geisi.  Strom.,  p.  122. 
"  Hauptprobleme,  p.  31. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  59 

If,  now,  the  foregoing  should  seem  lo  display  a  pronounced  leaning 
toward  the  conservatist,  absolutist  conception,  the  next  point  that  we 
have  to  insist  upon  may  have  a  slightly  different  bearing.  While  on 
the  one  hand  human  struggles  do  not  make  the  truth,  yet  on  the  other 
hand  truth  always  comes  into  human  affairs  in  the  concrete,  flesh-and- 
blood  form  of  living  activity,  never  in  the  dusty  abstractions  of  the 
closet  thinker.  Indeed  almost  any  number  of  quotations  might  be 
given  to  show  how  little  patience  he  has  with  the  thin-section  truth  of 
the  syllogism  as  compared  with  the  heavy,  three-dimensional  truth  of  a 
moving  conviction  or  a  ruling  conception  in  history.  Where  work  is 
being  done,  where  real  value  and  progress  are  being  achieved,  there 
the  truth  in  its  final  sense  is  present.  Indeed,  he  has  been  called  a 
"voluntarist"  because  of  his  assistance  on  struggle,  achievement.  And 
he  is  quite  willing  to  countenance  that  name,  if  only  it  be  thoroughly 
understood,  that  the  timeless  energy  of  the  Geistesleben  is  altogether 
higher,  in  its  being,  than  the  simple  voluntary  activity  of  men.  He  is 
the  first,  not  merely  to  grant,  but  to  insist,  that  the  effort  to  construe 
the  universe  as  a  kingdom  of  Reason  is  a  hopeless  failure — we  for- 
get "dass  Wissen  nun  und  nimmer  Leben  zu  ersetzen  vermag,  dass  wir  bei 
jener  Wendungstatt  eines  vollen  und  wahrhaf tigen  Lebens  nur  ein  Halb — 
und  Scheinleben  finden."^^  That  sort  of  a  syllogistic,  mathematical  world 
is  too  airy  to  support  the  leaden  currents  of  real  existence;  no  manipulation 
of  theorems  and  corollaries  could  ever  produce  the  intensities  of  real  life. 
The  transcendent  Reality  is  one  of  power  as  well  as  meaning,  of  activity 
as  well  as  value;  and  the  presence  of  it  in  any  great  amount  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  man  is  more  a  trophy,  a  hard-earned  acquisition  than  a 
passive  reflection  of  Platonic  order.  And  it  must  be  admitted  that,  while 
a  static,  Spinoza-like  realm  of  pure  logical  truth  is  easier  to  harmonize 
with  the  idea  of  timelessness  than  is  a  dynamic,  active  Unity  of  Spirit, 
the  latter  is  indefinitely  more  true  to  the  apparent  facts.  To  this  con- 
ception we  must  return  when  discussing  the  presuppositions  of  history; 
in  this  connection  it  may  be  sufficient  simply  to  have  pointed  out  the 
way  in  which  this  time-enveloping  Geistesleben  comes  into  the  life  of  men. 

One  other  point,  finally,  needs  to  be  emphasized  before  we  turn 
definitely  to  the  wider  field  of  history.  The  "present"  in  human  con- 
sciousness is,  afortiori,  not  the  mathematical  present  of  mechanistic 
views.  On  the  contrary,  the  present  is  essentially  a  possession  of  con- 
sciousness; the  amount  of  its  content,  the  breadth  of  its  view,  the  degree 

"  Hauptprobleme,  p.  58. 


60  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

of  command  that  it  has  over  the  flow  of  time  and  change, — all  that  is 
determined  purely  by  the  strength  of  that  consciousness  itself  in  its 
grip  on  the  unseen  world.  This,  we  are  bound  to  think,  is  a  crucial 
point  in  its  relation  to  the  timelessness  of  the  Geistesleben  in  Professor 
Eucken's  theory.  One's  conception  of  the  present,  what  it  means  and 
what  determines  it,  settles  for  good  and  all  one's  metaphysic  of  the 
outer  world.  Is  it  possible  to  define  the  present,  to  distinguish  it  from 
future  and  past,  without  reference  to  consciousness?^''  We  have  tried 
above  to  show  the  futility  of  such  an  attempt.  The  mechanical,  mathe- 
matical present,  the  moment  we  go  to  examine  it,  shrivels  up  into  a 
plane  or  point  that,  of  course,  has  no  duration  and  so  is  not  time  at  all. 
Consciousness,  even  if  it  could  be  thought  of  as  existing  in  such  a  shadowy- 
place,  could  certainly  not,  under  those  circumstances,  know  change  since 
no  change  can  occur  in  a  single  point  of  time,  and  it  certainly  could  not 
know  its  own  identity  because  (1)  the  other  states  of  consciousness  with 
which  the  present  must  identify  itself  could,  on  such  a  hypothesis,  not 
exist  at  all, — that  is,  they  would  belong  only  with  the  vanished  moments 
of  the  past,  and  (2)  a  consciousness  of  identity  implies  a  knowledge  of 
change,  and  that  in  this  case  we  have  found  to  be  impossible.  And  if, 
accordingly,  we  retreat  to  the  other  alternative  and  put  the  present 
within  the  scope  and  grasp  of  consciousness  as  a  function  of  the  latter, 
we  have  practically  the  view  discussed  at  greater  length  in  another 
section  of  this  paper.  Indeed  we  need  only  to  state  our  own  view  in 
other  terms  to  say  with  Professor  Eucken  that,  while  the  intrinsic  char- 
acter of  time  is  the  complete  mutual  externality  of  all  its  parts,  yet  the 
absolute  presupposition  of  the  living  experience  of  the  world  series  and 
for  that  matter  of  time  itself,  is  that  there  should  also  be  a  deeper  principle 
of  union, — that  this  infinite  manifoldness  and  otherness  should  somehow 
be  sunk  in  an  embracing  Life  that  is  not  marked  ofiF  into  an  infinite  mul- 
tiplicity. And  if  so,  then  the  "present"  of  this  living  experience  is  not 
"ein  blosser  Punkt"  but  rather  a  time-transcending  span.  "Eine  geistige 
Gegenwart  fallt  uns  nicht  zu,  sie  will  von  uns  selbst  gebildet  sein,  auch 
ist  sie  kein  blosser  Augenblick,  sondern  eine  Befestigung  gegeniiber  dem 
Augenblick,  ein  Leben  geistiger  Art."^^  To  the  degree  to  which  a 
man  is  raised  above  the  Hfeless  and  perhaps  the  animal  plane  of  simple 
succession,  just  to  that  extent  does  he  become  an  embodiment  of  the 
supersensible  Geistesleben. 

"  Geist.  Strom.,  p.  270  et  al. 

"  Geist.  Strom.,  p.  264.    Cf.  also  Hauptprobleme,  pp.  57,  67,  etc. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  61 

It  is  above  all  as  a  philosophy  of  history®"  that  the  work  of  Professor 
Eucken  will  live.  Not  only  is  the  inner  understanding  of  the  move- 
ment of  history  of  commanding  aim  of  his  work  as  a  whole,  but  the  very 
arguments  on  which  he  bases  his  view  of  the  world  are,  in  the  great 
majority  of  cases,  based  upon  the  facts  of  historical  experience.  Espe- 
cially is  this  true  in  the  case  of  his  view  of  time,  since  history  is  simply 
the  human  phase  of  the  time  world  taken  in  the  large.  And  what  is 
true  of  history  as  a  whole  must  reveal  correspondingly  the  character  of 
the  individual's  reaUty  who  is,  of  course,  only  a  fraction  of  that  larger 
whole.  We  shall  therefore  go  at  once  to  the  favorite  field  of  our  dis- 
tinguished author  and  ask  with  him  what  light  the  experience  of  history 
can  throw  on  our  problem  of  the  nature  of  time. 

Here  once  more  the  foremost  consideration  is  the  moral  one.  Can 
the  work  of  the  world  go  on  if  the  moral  life  is  without  an  anchor?  Will 
men  strive  and  sacrifice  just  to  hallow  and  sanctify  moments  that,  the 
instant  they  are  real,  vanish  into  a  nothingness  that  is  "too  dark  for 
shadows  and  too  empty  for  dreams?"  Will  they  stand  in  awe  of  moral 
laws  whose  only  assignable  sanction  is  that  of  a  contingent,  passing  cus- 
tom? Will  they  struggle  and  fight  to  cHmb  higher,  if  they  know  they 
are  on  a  ladder  that  dissolves  into  nothing  at  both  ends  and  leads  to 
absolutely  nothing  except  more  cHmbing?  And  on  the  contrary,  does 
it  not  redeem  and  glorify  moral  efiFort  for  one  to  feel  that  in  the  very  heat 
of  the  conflict, — yes,  even  by  means  of  it,  he  is  coming  nearer  to  the  heart 
of  the  eternal?  These  are  not  Professor  Eucken's  words  but  they 
embody  his  standpoint.  It  is  evident  that  we  have  discussed  the  same 
point  before,  only  then  it  was  with  particular  reference  to  the  individual. 
In  genera]  the  moral  issue  turns  upon  the  point  of  transitoriness  and 
absolute  relativity  as  opposed  to  the  abiding  foundation  of  the  timeless 
Geistesleben  that,  in  his  system  of  thought,  is  superior  to  all  the  ravages 
of  change.  This,  of  course,  is  absolutely  opposed  to  the  Pragmatist's 
appeal  for  the  reality  of  time  and  change,  and  oddly  enough  both  sides 
make  their  plea  on  the  basis  of  the  urgent  demands  of  the  moral  life! 
If  there  is  an  Absolute,  say  the  Pragmatists,  then  the  moral  life  becomes 
a  farce;  it  accomplishes  nothing  absolutely  new  or  different;  there  is  no 
real  movement  in  it  at  all.  If  there  is  no  ultimate  Whole  that  transcends 
time,  says  Professor  Eucken,  then  moral  effort  becomes  futile  and 
absurd  since  it  does  not  get  anywhere;  it  has  no  real  end  or  goal  to  attain; 
it  is  a  mere  fighting  of  shadows;  it  is  a  meaningless,  treadmill  sort  of 

"  Cf.  Article  Philosophie  der  Geschichte  in  KuUur  der  Gegenwart,  Vol.  on  Sys.  Phil. 


62  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

work  that  only  leads  to  more — always  more! — of  the  same  thing! 
Although,  so  far  as  I  know,  Professor  Eucken  nowhere  discusses  this  phase 
of  the  Pragmatist  contention,  the  issue  on  both  sides  is  so  clearly  drawn, 
even  in  mutual  isolation,  that  a  comparison  of  the  two  types  of  thought 
could  not  but  be  instructive.  But  a  detailed  discussion  of  this  point 
would  take  us  very  far  afield  and  must  be  dispensed  with.  Suffice  to 
indicate  the  emphatic  position  taken  here  by  the  author  we  are  dis- 
cussing. It  is  safe  to  say  (and  this  is  written  with  his  personal  approval) 
that  the  moral  issue  in  history  is  his  chief,  though  of  course  not  his  only, 
reason  for  holding  to  the  presence  of  a  transcendent  Life  in  the  move- 
ment of  history.  Instead  of  giving  any  specific  quotations  in  support 
of  this  interpretation,  it  would  be  better  to  refer  to  his  writings  as  a  whole, 
especially  to  Der  Sinn  und  Wert  des  LebensP 

The  older  and  more  distinctly  medieval  view  that  the  divine  was 
present  in  history  only  in  certain  definite  miraculous  events  of  the  past 
is  becoming  rapidly  obsolete.  The  careful  investigations  of  modern 
historical  criticism  have  shown  that,  when  evidences  are  duly  weighed, 
all  the  periods  of  history  come  to  look  very  much  alike  and  the  isolation 
of  any  one  as  a  time  when  the  gods  walked  with  men  becomes  increas- 
ingly impossible.  And  as  this  leveling  process  goes  on  it  becomes  also 
evident  that  it  is  only  a  matter  of  words  whether  we  call  it  Pantheism 
or  Positivism  or  Mechanism,  so  long  as  we  are  not  able  to  look  beyond  the 
facts  we  see.  Not  only  is  the  present  individual  shut  off  from  any  unique 
relationship  to  the  Whole,  but  there  is  not  even  a  past  glory  to  which 
he  may  look  backward.  He  is  an  item  in  a  long  list, — a  very  dreary 
long  list  that  gets  longer  and  longer  as  research  extends  the  boundaries 
of  known  history.  His  moral  code  which  seems  to  him  to  have  so  high 
a  sanction  is  calmly  compared  with  a  hundred  other  codes  as  one  species 
of  infusoria  is  compared  with  others.  His  political  inheritance  that 
has  been  bought  with  the  blood  of  heroic  men  is,  as  a  "form  of  govern- 
ment," coolly  compared  with  other  little  institutions  created  for  the  same 
purpose,  and  points  of  similarity  and  difference  duly  noted.  Even 
his  religion  is  put  alongside  many  other  similar  movements  in  the  world's 
history,  the  sources  from  which  it  has  come  are  critically  inspected,  and 
the  number  of  its  followers  duly  estimated.  All  the  relative  intensity 
and  importance  that  he  used  to  see  in  his  ideals  fades  out  of  them  during 
this  cold-blooded  treatment  and  they  become  only  details  among  count- 
less others.     The  present  becomes  as  dead  as  the  past;  the  attempted 

*®  Cf.  also  Kultur  der  Gegenwari,  Band  Systemalische  Philosophie,  article  by  Prof. 
Eucken, 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  63 

vivisection  has  turned  out,  as  it  not  infrequently  does  in  other  depart- 
ments, to  be  a  post-mortem.  The  particular  time  and  the  individual 
Kfe  are  lost  in  the  immensity  of  the  whole. 

And  if,  now,  in  discouragement,  the  seeker  undertakes  to  forsake 
the  historical  standpoint  altogether  and  return  simply  to  the  present 
and  rejoice  once  more  in  the  simple  faith  of  his  tribe, — to  look  upon 
life  through  personal  eyes  again,  he  finds  it  as  impossible  to  do  as  it  would 
be  to  revive  the  vivid  faery  world  of  his  childhood.  He  sees  now  that 
a  present  just  for  itself  and  out  of  connection  with  the  past  would  be 
simply  a  baseless  puzzle,  an  atom  loose  in  space,  a  meaningless  noise  in 
the  dark.  If  he  accepts  history  in  its  wide  systematic  form,  it  promptly 
engulfs  him;  if  he  forsakes  it  he  is  beached  on  an  unknown  shore:  with 
it  he  becomes  only  an  incident  in  an  infinite  series;  without  it  he  is  an 
accident  of  chance! — "So  befinden  wir  uns  in  einer  hochst  verworrenen 
Lage,  ja  einem  unertraglichen  Dilemma:  wir  konnen  die  Geschichte 
weder  festhalten  noch  entbehren;  wir  geraten  ins  Leere,  wo  wir  sie 
abschiitteln,  wir  verfallen  einem  Schattenleben,  wo  wir  uns  ihr  unter- 
werfen."7o 

Thus  the  supertemporal  seems  to  be  dismissed  altogether  and  we 
are  left  with  a  thorough-going  positivism  on  our  hands  until,  behold, 
this  very  science  of  history  calls  us  back  in  an  unexpected  way  to  the 
conception  of  an  over-ruling  Unity  of  some  sort.^'  That  is,  laws  are 
found  to  hold  good  in  the  sweep  of  history,  and  laws  require  explanation. 
There  seems  to  be  development  and  growth,  the  reality  of  which  shows 
inner  connection  and  organization  of  long  stretches  of  time.  But  if 
the  successive  moments  were  as  mutually  exclusive  and  other  as  a 
casual  observation  would  lead  one  to  suppose,  how  is  this  organization 
(which,  like  any  other  type  of  organization,  is  a  form  of  unity)  to  be 
accounted  for?  Once  more  our  author  answers,  only  by  the  presence 
in  history  of  a  supertemporal  Principle, — a  Principle  that  is  not  dissipated 
into  the  infinitely  many  by  the  lightning  shutter  of  the  present  moment. ^^ 

Another  consideration  which  may  easily  be  construed  as  a  corollary 
to  the  above  and  which  may  help  in  an  understanding  of  it,  is  that,  on  a 
simple  mechanical  plane,  it  is  quite  impossible  to  have  any  standard 
of  evaluation  of  different  events  and,  for  that  matter,  any  degrees  of 
value  to  test.  In  a  chain  all  the  links  suffer  the  same  tension;  it  is  folly 
to  speak  of  one  as  more  "important"  than  another.     And  in  a  simple 

"  Geist.  Strom.,  p.  262. 

"  Ibid.,  p.  257. 

"  Ibid.,  p.  268. 


64  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

mechanical  series  no  one  step  is  more  "significant"  than  any  other. 
The  total  importance  of  each  and  every  moment  is  summed  up  in  this, 
that  it  is  the  consequent  of  the  moment  that  preceded  it  and  the  causal 
antecedent  of  the  moment  that  is  immediately  to  follow.  Thus  in  a  sense, 
each  one  gathers  up  all  the  past  and  with  equal  completeness  fore- 
shadows all  the  future.  One  in  its  outward  form  may  be  a  moment  of 
inaction  and  stillness;  the  next  a  cataclysm:  but  in  reality  the  latter 
contains  nothing  new  or  different;  it  only  articulates  the  hidden  secrets 
of  the  apparent  quiet  that  preceded  it.  Such  a  world  knows  no  rank 
nor  condition;  it  is  no  respector  of  moments  nor  of  men.'^*  On  this  basis, 
to  speak  of  true  or  false  steps  in  the  history  of  humanity  is  like  speaking 
of  true  or  false  geological  changes  in  the  Silurian  era.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  there  is  some  foothold,  some  rock  that  does  not  go  with  the  stream, 
it  is  possible  from  there  to  measure  its  changing  currents.  If  in  history 
each  event  is  related,  not  merely  to  a  vanished  antecedent,  but  to  a 
world  of  meaning  and  life  that  does  not  vanish  with  the  passing  of  time, 
we  may  speak  of  events  as  having  more  or  less  significance,  and  of  ideas 
or  convictions  as  having  more  or  less  of  truth.  And,  as  we  saw  above, 
even  historical  criticism  tends  in  the  long  run  to  demand  some  such  a 
resource  of  interpretation.  It  becomes  a  "science  of  history" ;  it  organizes 
its  material  as  other  sciences  do;  it  finds  laws  to  some  extent  inherent  in 
its  data;  it  speaks  of  the  "logical"  or  "natural"  or  "necessary"  result 
of  this  or  that  event, — just  as  if  the  apparently  distinct  moments  of 
time  were  really  bound  together  in  a  unity  analogous  to  that  of  an  argu- 
ment or  a  purpose!"  It  seems  that  even  on  the  shifting  and  crossing 
currents  of  history  the  explorer  is  able  to  find  his  way:  perhaps  there  is 
a  compass  needle  that  does  not  turn  with  the  ship ! 

And  not  only  does  some  sort  of  time-spanning  reality  furnish  such  a 
desired  standard  of  evaluation  but,  we  are  told,  it  lifts  man  completely 
out  of  the  disheartening  dilemma  into  which,  as  we  saw  above,  he  is 
plunged  by  the  positivistic  view  of  history.  He  can  assert  his  personal 
importance  in  the  very  face  of  the  bewildering  multitude  of  historical 
humanity;  he  can  proclaim  his  own  truth  in  the  very  midst  of  the  Babel 
of  tongues.  All  this  is  his,  if  only  he  can  show  himself  to  be  a  child  of 
Eternity  as  well  as  of  tim.e.  "Die  unerlassHche  Voraussetzung  alles 
dessen  abtr  ist  eine  unmittelbare  Gegenwart  der  ewigen  Wahrheit  durch 
den  gesamten  Verl  -,uf  der  Geschichte,  di^  IVIoglichkeit,  sich  jederzeit  aus 

'^  Geist.  Strom.,  p.  267. 

■*  Ibid.,  p.  257. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  65 

cdem  Strom  des  Werdens  in  sie  zii  verselzen."'^^  Indeed,  under  these  cir- 
umstances  the  individual  ftnds  even  a  great  advantage  in  his  connection 
with  history,— the  very  connection  that  at  first  flush  seemed  to  engulf 
him.  The  world  of  the  Geistesleben  is  high  above  the  plane  of  mere 
events;  its  inner  riches  are  not  thrown  broadcast  upon  the  air.  They 
must  be  fought  for,  taken  by  storm,  and  no  one  isolated  man  is  equal  to 
the  task.  The  greatest  truths  have  been  slowly  and  painfully  won 
throughout  long  historical  movements  in  which  the  talent  and  even 
genius  of  countless  men  have  been  employed.  Take,  for  instance, 
the  essential  heart  of  truth  in  Christianity,  in  Science,  in  Democracy; 
how  little  c-uld  it  come  in  response  to  the  efforts  oi  one  man!  As  well 
might  he  try,  single-handed,  to  build  a  Roman  Empire  or  a  Panama 
canal!  "So  bedarf  unser  Streben  nach  Entfaltung  einer  zeituberlegenen 
Geistigkeit  einer  wirksamen  Unterstutzung;  eine  solche  liefert  ihm  aber 

die  Geschichte In  jener  (esoterischen  Geschichte)  mag  ein 

selbstandiges  Geistesleben  hervorbrechen,  das  durch  alien  Wandel  der 
Zeiten  hindurch  auch  zu  uns  spricht  und  unser  eignes  Streben  zu  fordern 
vermag."'^'^  Thus  on  the  one  hand  the  individual's  own  efforts  are 
powerfully  reinforced  by  the  numberless  other  factors  in  the  historical 
movement  of  which  he  forms  a  part  and,  on  the  other  hand,  he  is  thus 
enabled  by  the  very  role  he  may  play  in  history  to  have  a  part  in  a  Life 
that  is  high  above  the  mere  before-and-after  of  historical  succession. 
It  follows  that  men  differ  in  the  degree  to  which  they  are  carried 
with  the  temporal  tide.  Many  live  lives  but  little  above  the  sheer 
mechanical  level  of  successive  sensations;  some  men  are  great  because 
of  the  strength  of  commanding  personalities  and  their  grip  on  truth. 
And  as  men,  so  do  events,  differ  in  the  degree  to  which  the  message  of  the 
All  is  embodied  in  them.  There  is  the  humdrum  of  everyday  life  that 
runs  off  mechnically,  almost  unconsciously;  on  the  other  hand,  there  are 
the  intense  moments,  the  crises,  the  turning  points  that  make  the  destinies 
of  men  and  nations.  It  is  there  that,  in  a  special  and  unique  way,  one 
feels  the  touch  of  the  Everlasting.  "Durch  die  ganze  Geschichte  bleibt 
echte  Geistigkeit  und  blossmenschliche  Lebensflihrung  in  hartem  Streit 

miteinander."" "Das  wahrhaft  Grosse  waren  dabei  nicht 

einzelne  Gedanken  und  Bestrebungen,  sondern  eine  neue  Art  des  Lebens 
gegeniiber  den  Zwecken  und  Meinungen  des  Alltages."^^ 

^s  Hauptprobleme,  p.  67.     O'.  also  Geist.  Strom.,  pp.  268-269,  etc. 
'*  Geist.  Strom.,  p.  265. 
"  Geist.  Strom.,  p.  266. 
» Ihid.,  p.  265. 


66  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

Two  other  points  remain  to  be  noticed  in  this  review.  In  the  first 
place,  in  history  as  in  the  individual  life,  real  transcendence,  real  truth, 
is  reached  not  in  logic-chopping  syllogisms  nor  the  bland  and  placid 
reflections  of  the  monk  or  recluse,  but  in  the  great  spiritual  struggles  and 
efforts  of  the  leaders  of  men.  The  great  truths,  in  history  as  in  the 
individual  life,  are  mighty  moving  forces, — not  mere  sheen  upon  its 
surface.''^ 

And  finally,  if  the  life  of  both  the  present  and  the  past  has  its  center 
of  gravity  not  in  the  plane  of  the  moments  that  vanish  as  fast  as  they 
come,  but  in  the  transcendent  unity  of  the  Geistesleben,  then  there  is 
a  way  for  the  present  to  participate  in  the  wealth  of  the  temporally 
vanished  past  without  being  simply  the  mechanical  resultant  of  it.^" 
I  imagine  that  one  might  illustrate  his  meaning  in  some  such  homely  way 
as  this:  Suppose  I  touch  one  hand  with  the  other;  a  strange  sense  that 
both  are  "me"  arises  at  once.  That  is,  the  experience  is  altogether 
different  than  that  of  touching  an  "outside"  object.  And  this  feeling  is 
e\ddently  nothing  that  comes  simply  from  the  end  organs  of  touch,  nor 
is  it  due  to  any  particular  external  conditions  that  mediate  the  contact 
of  the  two  hands.  It  comes  from  an  inner  relationship  or  unity  that, 
while  active  in  the  two  hands,  does  not  partake  of  their  "twoness," — 
that  is  not  separated  by  their  separation.  Perhaps  in  some  such  way  as 
personality  thus  rises  superior  to  the  manifoldness  of  space,  it  in  our 
little  lives  and  much  more  the  Geistesleben  in  history,  rise  superior  to 
the  excluding  multiplicity  of  time.  Thus  the  present  feels  itself  part  and 
parcel  with  the  past  (and  with  what  it  knows  of  the  future)  because  the 
same  Life  throbs  in  it  all. 


Considerable  space  has  been  given  to  the  exposition  of  Professor 
Eucken's  view  of  time  and  the  timeless  because,  in  the  main,  his  method 
is  a  very  original  one.  The  custom  has  been  that  the  philosopher  should 
first  work  out  his  view  of  the  world  on  metaphysical  or  epistemological 
grounds  and  then  construct  his  ethics  and  philosophy  of  history  to  match. 
But  in  this  instance  the  order  is  reversed.  The  ethics  and  philosophy  of 
history  stand  first  in  importance.  To  be  sure  he  does  not  attempt  a 
philosophy  of  history  or  of  the  moral  life  in  isolation  from  metaphysics. 
On  the  contrary  he  considers  a  systematic  world  view  to  be  of  prime 

"  Cf.  Geist.  Strom.,  pp.  266,  268,  272. 
8"  Ibid.,  p.  267. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  67 

importance.  A  part  of  the  data  for  this  view  he  finds,  with  Kant,  in 
the  postulates  of  morality;  the  rest  he  gathers  from  the  needs  of  the 
historical  life  itself  that  it  is  the  very  object  of  that  world-view  to  explain. 

And,  incidentally,  there  has  been  little  attempt  at  criticism.  The 
reason  is  not  far  to  seek.  We  have  been  interested  in  just  one  great 
characteristic  of  the  "Geistesleben,"— its  superiority  to  the  plurality 
involved  in  succession,  and  with  his  view  on  this  point  the  writer  finds 
himself  in  substantial  agreement.  There  are  other  features  of  his  con- 
ception of  the  all-embracing  Reahty  that,  to  say  the  least,  would  admit 
of  some  debate.  But  if  we  consider  his  conclusion  with  reference  to  time 
to  be  that,  in  its  ultimate  existence,  the  World-All  is  not  temporally 
conditioned  but  that,  instead,  time  as  a  connected  series  is  a  determina- 
tion of  that  Life,  then  against  such  conclusion  we  have  no  complaint  to 
bring. 

Of  course,  the  object  of  this  section  of  our  discussion  has  not  been  merely 
that  of  presenting  the  views  of  Jena's  veteran  philosopher,  worthy  as 
such  an  aim  might  be.  Europe  has  at  present  another  great  thinker 
whose  interest  in  the  time  problem  is  fundamental,  whose  treatment 
of  it  is  strikingly  original,  and  M^hose  final  conclusions  seem  to  differ  as 
wdely  as  do  his  micthods  from  those  of  Professor  Eucken.  We  refer 
to  Professor  Henri  Bergson  of  Paris.  Instead  of  starting  from  the  facts 
of  ethics  and  history,  his  method  is  a  psychological-biological  one. 
And  instead  of  concluding  that  the  basis  of  existence,  the  ultimate 
Life  of  the  world,  is  timeless  in  its  inner  character,  he  insists  that  it  is 
there  and  only  there  that  "real"  time  exists!  To  this  seeming  antithesis 
of  the  view  above  discussed  we  shall  now  turn,  to  learn  as  nearly  as 
possible  how  the  two  views  stand  related  to  each  other. 


Bergson 


When  one  goes  from  the  reading  of  Professor  Eucken  to  Professor 
Bergson's  work  he  finds  himself  in  a  wholly  new  world.  With  the  change 
of  language  there  is  also  a  complete  change  of  method,  of  standpoint,  of 
personality.  The  heavy  and  intense  earnestness  of  the  German  is  fol- 
lowed by  the  amazing  brilliancy  and  originality  of  the  French  philosopher. 
Perhaps  the  difference  is  partly  that  between  the  time-honored  little  city 
of  Goethe  and  Schiller  and  the  brilliant  capital  of  France. 

But  underneath  differences  of  form  there  are  many  points  of  agree- 
ment.   One  leading  conviction  that  is  common  to  both  is  that  truth  does 


68  SOME  VIEWS  or  the  time  problem 

not  live  in  the  intellect  alone,  nor  indeed  even  chiefly  there.  Both  are 
opposed  to  intellectualism,  rationalism  in  any  form.  The  mere  concept 
may  stand  for  concrete  experience,  may  act  as  substitute  for  it  in  our 
inteUectual  operations,  but  it  is  never  equivalent  to  it  any  more  than  a 
guide-post  is  equivalent  to  the  city  it  points  at,  or  a  photograph  to  a  man. 
Real  truth  Professor  Eucken  finds  in  the  wearing  spiritual  toil  of  indi- 
vidual men  and  in  the  ponderous  swing  of  history;  Professor  Bergson  finds 
it  in  the  indescribable  immediacy  of  intuition.  That  really  final  datum 
for  which  the  philosophers  search  and  have  searched  so  far  lies  so  near 
they  overlook  it.  Like  Sir  Launfal  they  made  long  pilgrimages  in  quest 
of  the  blessing  that,  without  their  suspecting  it,  is  always  waiting  for 
them  at  their  very  gates.  In  the  inner  life  lies  the  secret  of  the  outer 
world.  What  is  time?  Tt  is  not  an  outer  moving  thing  nor  a  mathe- 
matical medium  in  which  events  are  strung  along.  If  one  would  really 
know  what  it  is  he  needs  simply  to  gaze  into  the  molten  mass  of  the  soul: 
no  matter  if;  as  with  a  Swiss  landscape,  the  better  one  sees  it  the  less  able 
he  is  to  tell  us  what  he  sees !  The  important  thing  is  that  he  should  see. 
One  is  reminded  here  again  of  St.  Augustine  "Si  rogas,  quid  sit  tempus, 
nescio;  si  non  rogas,  intelUgo!"  So  also  Henri  Bergson.  Inner  experi- 
ence is  burdened  with  truth  that  the  intellect  cannot  construe.  It  is 
like  attempting  a  chemical  analysis  of  protoplasm;  the  reagents  kill  the 
specimen.  To  be  sure  this  conception  of  truth  diverges  from  that  of 
Professor  Eucken  in  the  direction  of  mysticism;  but  both  are  opposed  to 
rationalism  at  all  events,  and  are  themselves  not  so  far  apart  as  might  at 
first  appear. 

Even  for  an  introductory  outline  it  is  still  necessary  to  present  his 
main  conceptions  a  little  more  in  detail.  The  essential  nature  of  intelli- 
gence, as  opposed  to  instinct,  he  finds  in  its  tendency  to  deal  with  its 
world  in  a  quantitative  way,  to  project  it  in  a  conceptual, — i.  e.,  inorganic, 
mathematical,  and  in  the  last  analysis  spatial  form.  The  mind  constructs 
its  concrete  world  wholly  in  spatial  terms;  it  is  quantitative,  divisible; 
its  parts  are  mutually  exclusive  and  distinct.  Intellect  is  the  method  of 
dealing  with  environment  by  making  tools  out  of  inert  matter,  and  mak- 
ing use  of  these  through  a  knowledge  of  their  physical,  calculable  proper- 
ties. Instinct  is  also  a  method  of  dealing  with  environment  but  it 
consists  in  growing  living  organs  to  meet  the  demands  of  outer  life.  Man 
knows  geometry,  but  triangles  have  no  such  things  as  history  or  innerness 
about  them.  He  can  make  use  of  the  simple  quantitative  relationships 
of  triangularity  for  this  very  reason  that  they  involve  nothing  like  growth 
or  change  or  decay.    Bees,  on  the  other  hand,  make  hexagonal  cells 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME 


69 


without  knowing  any  geometry  nor  any  "why"  of  a  matheniatical  sort. 
The  latter  method  is  obviously  more  convenient  for  the  specific  purpose 
of  building  honev  cells;  the  former  is  just  as  obviously  more  flexible, 
capable,  indeed,  of  indefinitely  varied  application.  If  the  former  enjoys 
and  preserves  an  immediate  touch  with  specific,  growing,  changing 
existence,  the  latter  finds  its  own  immeasurable  advantage  in  the  formula- 
tion and  understanding  of  general,  though  for  that  very  reason  abstract, 
laws.  Intelligence  is  successful  so  long  as  it  can  deal  with  magnitudes,— 
can  measure,  separate,  count,  compare  them.  This  is  why  the  physical 
sciences  make  such  progress;  it  is  also  why  Biology  seems  to  succeed  only 
so  far  as  it  can  be  studied  from  physical  standpoints.^^  And  just  as  it 
builds  its  outer  world  of  objects,  so  it  tends  to  construct  its  inner  world  of 
ideas  to  match.  Thus  inner  states  are  thought  of  as  separate,  countable; 
they  are  associated,  "added  together,"  "broken  up,"  etc.,  like  veritable 
things  of  the  outer  world. ^^ 

As  the  author  suggests,  however,  there  is  a  certain  advantage  in  this 
sort  of  misrepresentation.  The  "outer"  world  in  which  society  is  built 
up  is  this  projected  world  of  space  and  quantity.  The  inner  life  of  my 
personal  organization  is  peculiar  to  me.  Nobody  else  can  know  immedi- 
ately how  my  personal  experience  "looks  from  the  inside."  The  world 
we  share  with  each  other  is  the  physical  world  of  perceptive  consciousness 
and  that  is  a  spatial  one.  Now  it  is  little  wonder  that,  in  seeking  to  make 
our  inner  life  communicable,  we  should  cast  it  so  far  as  possible  in  these 
same  quantitative  terms  and  make  of  it  an  analogy  of  space.  Just  as  we 
analyze  the  confusion  of  objective  existence  into  unities  and  identities 
and  attach  a  word  to  each  (and  perhaps  the  definite  naming  is  just  one 
phase  of  the  analvzing),  so  we  tend  to  break  up  the  fluid,  interpenetrating 
life  of  consciousness  into  "states"  and  "relations"  and  emphasize  the 
mutual  externality  thus  aimed  at  by  affixing  names,  as  before.  And  just 
so  far  as  we  can  reasonably  carry  this  symbolic  division  of  what,  m  its 
truest  self,  is  indivisible,  to  just  that  degree  is  personal,  social  communica- 
tion possible.  One  thing,  too,  that  contributes  to  the  success  of  this 
seemingly  self-contradictory  procedure  is  the  fact  that  much  of  our  life  is 
really  lived  in  a  mechanical  way.  In  reflex  and  habit  our  actions  are 
often  almost  as  devoid  of  inner  consciousness  as  would  be  the  correspond- 
ing acts  of  a  mechanical  (i.  e.,  merely  spatial)  automaton;  and  so  the 
spatial  analogy  of  the  discreteness  of  words  serves  to  represent,  with  a 
fair  degree  of  accuracy,  what  is  going  on.     And  further:  although  lan- 

"  Creative  Evolution,  p.  ix  flF. 

82  Cf.  Time  and  Free  Will,  pp.  xix,  128,  etc. 


70  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PEOBLFM 

guage  may  be  primarily  the  product  of  our  gregarious  tendencies,  it 
comes  at  the  same  time  to  characterize  our  inner  life.  Just  as  we  tend 
to  acquire  mechanical  coordinations  for  physical  movement,  so,  too,  we 
acquire  habits  of  thought;  as  we  communicate  with  other  people  in  terms 
of  language,  so  we  tend  to  think  in  words  and  symbols, — at  least  so  long 
as  our  consciousness  is  of  the  ordinary,  work-a-day  sort.  Thus  the 
spatial  analogy  of  our  intelligent  processes,  though  based  ultimately  on 
an  error,  turns  out  to  possess  enormous  advantage  in  the  mediating  of 
social  intercourse  and  the  systematizing  of  thought. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  we  must  not,  because  of  these  advantages? 
forget  the  more  or  less  figurative  character  of  this  way  of  dealing  with 
life.  Just  as  the  opinion  that  we  write  out  in  the  form  of  a  sentence  is 
not  itself  cut  up  into  words  and  punctuated  with  commas  and  semicolons, 
so  our  inner  life  cannot  literally  be  granulated  into  a  mass  of  distinct 
ideas. ^^  It  is  on  this  account  that  our  most  momentous  decisions,  our 
most  profound  loves  and  hates,  are  just  the  ones  that  find  least  support 
in  our  symbolic  thinking  and  are  least  expressible  in  words.  If,  in  the 
crises,  our  reaction  seems  nonrational,  it  is  only  that  then  the  sovereign 
Self  has  spoken,  and  in  its  presence  all  our  pettifogging  and  logic-chopping 
is  of  little  avail;  at  such  a  moment  all  mere  ideas  and  words,  themselves 
but  the  servants  of  that  Self,  must  stand  aside.  That  is  to  say,  if  our 
purpose  is  not  simply  to  communicate  with  others  or  to  construct  an 
entertaining  logical  Castle  in  Spain, — if,  instead,  we  want  to  know  the 
ultimate  energy  and  impulse  of  the  living  World,  we  must  forsake  the 
quantitative  mathematical  symbols  of  ordinary  thought  and  "live  into" 
the  actual  movement  and  immediate  experience  of  creative  power.  The 
cinematograph  presents  a  series  of  static  views  and  these,  when  the 
interval  between  them  is  made  very  short,  may  suggest  very  strongly  the 
fact  of  motion.  But  however  rapid  the  succession  of  these  simultaneities 
may  be,  no  real  movement  can  ever  be  produced.  Or  again,  shadows 
may  indefinitely  resemble,  and  even  serve  to  represent,  concrete  objects 
in  the  outer  world,  but  no  infinite  addition  of  the  shadows  could  ever 
produce  a  ponderable  reality.  Even  so  are  the  artificial  entities  of 
mathematical  physics  and  analytical  mechanics  powerless  to  give  us  any 
revelation  of  the  actual  surging  swell  of  the  Ultimate. 

Now  in  each  of  these  realms,  the  symbolic,  quantitative  one  of  matter 
and  space  and  the  real  qualitative  depths  of  immediate  experience,  there 
is  an  element  that  we  identify  as  time  and  this  confused  double  identifica- 

*'  Time  and  Free  Will,  p.  164,  etc. 


TWO  IMrORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  71 

tion  is  the  heart  of  error  in  views  of  the  reality  of  time.  There  is,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  outer  time  that  we  divide  into  hours  or  seconds  or  eras,  the 
homogeneous  characterless  medium  of  Newton,  the  independent  variable 
of  our  mathematical  equations  in  theoretical  mechanics  and  astrophysics, 
the  time  that  is  infinite  in  length  and  in  divisibiUty;  on  the  other  hand  is 
the  experienced,  inner  sense  of  duration,  the  heterogeneous  flow  in  which 
things  grow  and  grow  old  and  of  which  no  two  moments  are  the  same,  the 
time  that,  as  it  really  occurs,  eludes  infinite  divisibiUty  by  its  very  con- 
creteness  and  baffles  our  most  expert  mathematical  calculus.  These 
indeed  seem  to  be  two  very  different  affairs,  and  if  such  a  real  dift'erence 
is  there  it  is  futile  to  attempt  to  abolish  it  by  christening  both  with  the 
same  name.  And  Professor  Bergson's  startling  suggestion  is  this:  Call 
the  first  one  "space";  only  the  second  one  described  above  is  real  dura- 
tion, real  time! 

Perhaps  our  first  question  in  reply  to  this  revolutionary  program  is, 
"How  in  the  world  did  two  things  so  absolutely  and  fundamentally  differ- 
ent ever  get  confused?"  And  for  his  answer  Professor  Bergson  takes  us 
to  a  very  unexpected  region  of  thought,  i.  e.,  to  the  psychological  notion 
of  intensity.  Here,  before  they  come  in  sight  of  the  time  question  at  all, 
philosophers,  along  with  ordinary,  unprofessional,  common-sense  people, 
have  become  the  victims  of  an  easy  fallacy,  and  all  the  woes  of  the  time- 
and-timeless  controversies  as  well  as  the  dogged  hostihties  of  the  free- 
will debates  result  logically  enough  from  this  unobserved  false  step. 
When  I  lift  up  a  brick  I  am  conscious  of  strain  and  exertion,  and  when 
thereafter  I  lift  two  bricks  with  the  same  hand^  what  could  be  more 
natural  than  to  say  that  I  feel  twice  as  much  strain  and  exertion?  Of 
course,  the  second  strain  feels  different  than  the  first,  but  why  not  say 
that  this  difference  in  feeling  is  a  difference  in  quantity  of  feeling  just  as 
the  difference  in  the  cause  is  the  simple  quantitative  one  of  2  to  1?  In 
the  more  personal  relationships  we  are  less  tempted  to  this  sort  of  reason- 
ing. For  instance,  it  does  not  take  twice  as  much  love  to  love  two 
brothers  as  to  love  one.  But  in  the  ordinary  realm  of  sensation  and 
effort  of  a  physical  sort,  we  habitually  speak  of  degrees  of  intensit}^  and 
mean  it,  too,  in  an  admittedly  quantitative  way.  And  just  here,  says 
Professor  Bergson,  we  err.  To  say  that  the  sensation  is  twice  as  intense 
because  the  stimulus  is  twice  as  large  is  to  see  psychic  states  refracted 
through  space.  Considered  apart  from  such  analogy  the  sensations  or 
feelings  are  simply  qualitatively  different  experiences  possessing  perhaps 
more  or  less  internal  complexity,  which  can  no  more  be  measured  in 


72  SOME  VIEWS  or  the  time  problem 

mathematical  terms  than  "gusts"  of  emotion  can  be  represented  on  a 
weather  map. 

But  if  we  once  allow  the  spatial  analogy  a  foothold  in  consciousness, 
it  tends  to  cover,  in  the  same  unpermissible  way,  more  and  more  ground. 
For  instance,  it  prompts  us  to  regard  the  inner  sense  of  duration  as  twice 
greater  in  one  case  than  in  another  just  because  the  hands  on  a  clock  or 
the  sun  in  the  sky  have  moved  through  twice  as  much  space  in  the  first 
instance.  This,  accordingly,  is  only  one  (though  perhaps  the  most 
important)  application  of  the  tendency  of  intelligence  in  general  to 
represent  everything,  even  its  very  self,  in  spatial  terms,  and  therefore 
ultimately  to  misrepresent  it.  And  if,  then,  it  can  be  shown  that  all 
quantitative  calculation,  including  all  distinct  multiplicity  and  measur- 
able magnitude  and  even  the  notion  of  intensity,  is  misdirected  when 
apphed  to  states  of  consciousness,  then  we  need  have  no  hesitation  in 
saying  that  the  inner  real  time  of  our  intimate  experience  cannot  be  the 
"t"  of  the  mathematical  equations  but  is  simply  a  unique  and  funda- 
mental aspect  of  the  living  conscious  being.  And  furthermore,  if  all 
notions  of  quantity  are  as  such  spatial,  then,  of  course,  quantitative  time 
along  with  the  rest  is  a  spatial  phantom, — the  ghost  of  real  duration. 
These  things  Professor  Bergson  seeks  to  prove. 

In  what  follows  the  intention  is  (1)  to  discuss  his  notion  of  magnitude 
and  multiplicity  as  apphed  to  conscious  states,  since  this  is  a  fundamental 
premise  in  his  conception  of  time,  and  (2)  to  seek  to  understand  the  latter 
by  means  of  a  comparison  of  it  with  Professor  Eucken's  view  on  the  same 
subject.  This  comparison  has  been  prompted  by  the  fact  that  the  two 
views  seem  at  first  sight  to  be  diametrically  opposed  to  each  other. 
Whereas  Professor  Eucken  holds  that  the  intrinsic  character  and  greatest 
glory  of  personaUty  is  its  power  to  transcend  the  merely  temporal,  the 
Professor  in  the  Collgge  de  France  insists  that  it  is  in  conscious  life  and 
there  only  that  time  is  real.  If  the  conclusions  of  these  men  are  really  as 
opposite  as  they  claim  to  be,  then  we  may  fairly  feel  that  at  the  present 
writing  the  time  problem  is  very  far  from  a  solution.  And  if  it  should 
appear,  on  the  other  hand,  that  these  two  men,  so  different  in  method 
and  terminology  and  general  aim,  still  hold  conceptions  that  are  in  the 
last  analysis  very  similar,  such  an  outcome  might  help  us  to  be  more 
optimistic  in  the  matter. 


First,  then,  with  regard  to  supposed  quantitative  features  of  psy- 
chological states.     Sensations,  perhaps  the  simplest  psychic  elements, 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  73 

are  generally  said  to  possess  three  attributes,— quality,  intensity,  and 
duration.  Professor  James  insists  that  they  have  extensity  as  well. 
But  this  notion  of  extensity  as  an  attribute  co5rdinate  with  the  other 
three,  Professor  Bergson,  I  believe,  does  not  consider.  At  any  rate 
there  is  no  effort  to  refute  James's  theory  while  at  the  same  lime  all  other 
quantitative  relationships  are  condemned  precisely  because  of  their 
quantitative  character.  He  does  recognize  extensity  as  a  quality  of 
conscious  states,^  but  this  is  deUberately  opposed  to  extension  as  the 
property  of  the  spatial  world,  and  this  latter  seems  to  correspond  to  what 
James  means  by  extensity,  in  which  case  they  are  very  far  from  an  agree- 
ment. Quality  also  is  not  so  much  discussed,  but  for  the  opposite  reason. 
He  not  only  holds  that  quality  is  real,  but  makes  it  about  the  only  attri- 
bute of  conscious  states  that  is  real,  even  duration  being  ultimately  a 
quality  of  conscious  states.  But  we  must  not  fail,  here  at  the  very  start, 
to  form  some  exact  conception  of  the  sense  in  which  conscious  states  have 
quality.  Take,  for  instance,  a  sensation  of  red.  In  saying  that  its 
quality  is  one  attribute  of  the  sensation,  we  surely  do  not  mean  (1)  that 
the  sensation  of  red  is  itself  a  red  object.  It  would  not  show  up  in  a 
spectrum  analysis.  Nor  (2)  does  this  reservation  necessarily  imply  that, 
on  the  contrary,  the  red  as  such  exists  only  in  the  thing  of  the  outer 
world.  If  it  did  imply  that  it  would  surely  be  wrong,  as  a  slight  acquaint- 
ance with  physics  would  serve  to  show.  We  have  a  sensation  of  red;  we 
do  not,  on  the  one  hand,  have  a  red  sensation,  nor,  on  the  other,  does  our 
sensation  as  an  inner  fact  somehow  stand  related  to  an  outer  fact  called 
red.  The  red  is  the  object  of  perception,  the  content  of  the  perceived 
fact,  without  implying  any  of  these  extreme  hypotheses.  This  is  surely 
the  sort  of  thing  that  is  meant  when  we  say  that  sensations  have  quality 
as  one  attribute. 

Now  with  this  conclusion  in  mind,  let  us  turn  to  the  question  of 
intensity.  Professor  Bergson  denies  that  conscious  states  have  intensive 
magnitude.  This,  being  a  quantity,  is  really  a  spatial  metaphor  read 
into  consciousness.  But  it  must  certainly  be  understood  at  once  that 
for  the  act  of  perception,  considered  as  a  fact  in  reality,  to  have  dimen- 
sions of  magnitude  is  one  thing;  for  perception,  considered  as  a  process  of 
apprehension,  to  embrace  facts  and  relationships  of  quantity,  is  quite 
another.  And  the  question  here  must  finally  come  to  this:  Do  we  not 
perceive  intensity  just  as  really,  and  in  the  same  sense,  as  we  do  quality? 
And  when  it  is  put  in  that  light  I  doubt  very  much  that  the  facts  will 
seem  to  warrant  a  negative  reply. 

^*  Matter  and  Metnory,  pp.  277-293. 


74  SOME  VIEWS  or  the  time  problem 

There  are  some  features  of  Professsor  Bergson's  contention  that  we 
readily  admit  to  be  valid,  (a)  For  instance,  most  of  our  conscious  states 
are  utterly  irreducible  to  exact  mathematical  formulae.  Love,  hate, 
ambition,  anxiety,  etc.,  can  scarcely  be  rated  by  percentage,  or  any  other 
mathematical  standard,  although  it  certainly  does  seem  valid  enough  to 
speak  of  even  these  in  terms  of  more  or  less,  which  are  literally  quantita- 
tive terms.  And,  if  we  come  back  to  simple  matters  of  sensation,  we  may 
well  admit  (b)  that  a  bright  light,  for  instance,  produces  a  different  effect 
in  consciousness  than  does  a  dim  one.  Wliat  we  find  it  hard  to  accept  is 
not  that  there  is  qualitative  difference  between  the  two,  but  that  the 
difference  is  wholly  and  only  qualitative.  Further  (c)  it  goes  without 
saying  that  consciousness  is  not  a  sort  of  force  of  a  varying  power  called 
intensity  that  might  conceivably  be  measured  in  dynes.  But  granted 
all  that,  we  could  still  be  aware  of  greater  intensity  when  looking  at  the 
sun  in  the  same  way  in  which  we  are  aware  of  its  color  as  a  quality.  And 
it  is  intensive  magnitude  of  just  this  sort  that  would  have  to  be  disproved 
in  order  to  make  out  that  quantity  in  general  or  time  in  particular  was 
not  real  as  a  constitutive  relation  in  perceptual  experience.  The  author's 
analysis  of  our  experience  of  differing  intensities  is  very  ingenious,  and 
his  conclusion  that  in  such  cases  there  is  always  (1)  a  change  in  quality  of 
experience  and  (2)  a  change  in  degree  of  complexity  of  conscious  contents, 
seems  to  be  entirely  vahd.  But  his  contention  that  these  latter  changes 
sum  up  completely  what  we  ordinarily  regard  as  differences  of  intensity 
is  not  convincing. 

It  might  conceivably  be  replied  to  this  that  we  can  be  just  as  vividly 
aware  of  a  dim  illumination  as  of  a  bright  one, — such  at  least  seems  true 
enough  as  a  psychological  fact.  But  (1)  this  would  not  help  the  opposing 
view  any  since  it  virtually  admits  degrees  of  consciousness.  Equal 
quantities  are  just  as  much  magnitudes  as  are  unequal  ones.  And  besides 
(2)  the  equal  awareness  in  case  of  the  less  intense  stimulus  is  generally  due 
to  the  presence  of  other  ideas  or  concerns  than  the  simple  sensation 
resulting  from  it.  For  instance,  a  child  shut  up  in  a  dark  room  may  be 
even  more  vividly  aware  of  the  darkness  than  he  would  be  of  bright  light; 
but  it  is  because  there  are  other  things  on  his  mind  than  just  the  inert 
passive  darkness.  And  this  interpretation  is  corroborated  (3)  by  the 
fact  that,  other  things  being  equal,  decrease  in  sensation  does  tend  toward 
unconsciousness.  And  even  the  precautions  we  take  in  our  sleeping 
arrangements  testify  to  this  tendency  for  decrease  in  sensation  to  be 
accompanied  by  diminished  consciousness.  We  conclude,  therefore,  that 
the  claim  that  we  can  be  just  as  vividly  aware  of  a  less  intense  stimulation 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  75 

would  not  offer  any  real  support  to  the  Bergsonian  view  that  there  is  no 
intensive  magnitude  in  conscious  experience. 

His  own  way  of  stating  the  point  at  issue  is  on  the  whole  a  very  satis- 
factory one.  In  discussing  supposed  intensive  magnitude  in  the  feeling 
of  pressure  he  suggests  that  we  "examine  whether  this  increase  of  sensa- 
tion ought  not  rather  to  be  called  a  sensation  of  increase."'*^  Perhaps 
that  is  a  better  way  to  describe  the  fact  tliat  I  am  conscious  of  greater 
muscular  tension  or  a  brighter  light  or  louder  sound.  But  would  not  the 
same  improvement  in  terminology  fit  also  the  attribute  of  quality  which, 
as  a  feature  of  conscious  states,  he  admits  so  freely  and  rests  so  much 
upon?  Suppose  we  examine  whether  a  quality  of  sensation  ought  not 
rather  to  be  called  a  sensation  of  quality,  as  for  instance  of  red.  As  was 
seen  above  it  is  a  fairly  difficult  task  to  say  in  just  what  sense  the  "red" 
characterizes  the  fact  of  perception  and,  rather  than  make  the  perception 
of  red  a  red  perception,  it  would  be  better  to  revise  our  general  formula  in 
just  the  way  he  suggests  we  modify  our  notion  of  intensive  magnitude 
(increase  and  decrease).  And  yet  our  author  insists  that  quahty  is  an 
ultimate  attribute  of  sensation,  while  intensive  magnitude  is  not. 

And  the  strongest  consideration  of  all  against  the  "new  way  of  ideas" 
that  we  are  here  discussing  is  just  this:  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  do  have  the 
idea  of  intensive  magnitude.  Where  did  we  get  it?  Suppose  we  grant 
his  contention  that  when  we  speak  of  intensity  in  the  old  sense  we  are 
really  mistaking  greater  qualitative  complexity  or  multiplicity  for  magni- 
tude; what  is  the  analogy  on  which  our  mistake  is  based?  The  native  of 
tropical  Africa  is  not  liable  to  mistake  salt  for  snow  when  he  has  never 
seen  any  snow.  How  can  a  person  mistake  something  for  something  else 
when  that  something  else  is  "sui  generis"  and  has  never  entered  into  his 
experience  at  all?  The  idea  of  intensive  magnitude  that  we  do  possess 
(1)  is  not  simply  consciousness  spatialized.  To  say  that  one  light  is 
brighter  than  another  is  precisely  and  explicitly  to  refer  to  an  attribute 
that  is  other  than  spatial.  A  square  yard  of  snow  surface  in  light  of  con- 
stant illumination  is  in  no  way  to  be  confused  with  a  square  foot  that  is 
nine  times  as  bright.  The  difference  we  intend,  rightly  or  wrongly,  in 
the  idea  of  intensive  magnitude  cannot  possibly  be  reduced  to  terms  of 
space.  And  if,  then,  (2)  we  resort  to  the  notion  of  qualitative  complexity, 
we  still  assert  an  error  that,  as  an  error,  it  is  impossible  to  account  for. 
That  is,  we  may  grant  that,  in  any  particular  case  you  may  choose,  we 
have  mistaken  simple  qualitative  complexity  for  intensive  magnitude; 

"  Time  and  Free  Will,  p.  41. 


76  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

but  this  could  not  be  true  in  all  cases  without  removing  all  distinguishing 
content  from  the  idea  of  intensity  as  something  different;  in  which  case, 
by  the  way,  there  has  never  really  been  any  error  at  all.  To  repeat,  we 
have  the  idea  of  intensive  magnitude.  If,  upon  closer  inspection,  it  is 
exactly  the  same  as  the  idea  of  complexity,  then  we  have  the  author's 
authority  for  applying  it  to  conscious  states  (it  could  make  no  difference 
which  of  two  synonyms  one  made  use  of);  and  if  the  idea  of  intensive 
magnitude  cannot  be  reduced  to  these  other  ideas  as  elements,  then  I 
submit  that  intensive  magnitude  must  somewhere  be  a  fact  in  experience, 
otherwise  the  idea  could  never  arise.  The  very  existence  of  the  illusion 
testifies  to  the  existence  somewhere  of  the  fact! 

But  next  let  us  grant  for  the  sake  of  argument  that,  when  a  conscious 
state  seems  to  have  greater  intensive  magnitude,  the  real  fact  is  only  that 
more  and  more  conscious  elements  have  been  affected, — that  "little  by 
little  it  permeates  a  larger  number  of  psychic  elements,  tinging  them,  so 
to  speak,  with  its  own  color.  "^''  This  very  retreat  has  its  dangers,  for 
the  idea  of  number  has  a  desperately  quantitative  ring  about  it.  This 
difficulty  Professor  Bergson  meets  by  a  fairly  heroic  effort.  There  are 
two  types  of  multipUcity, — one  that  is  homogeneous  and  discrete  as 
magnitude,  and  another  type  that  is  heterogeneous  and  of  which  the 
parts,  instead  of  being  other  and  discrete,  are  fluid  and  permeate  each 
other.  "Our  conclusion,  therefore,  is  that  there  are  two  kinds  of  multi- 
plicity; that  of  material  objects,  to  which  the  conception  of  number  is 
immediately  applicable;  and  the  multipUcity  of  states  of  consciousness, 
which  cannot  be  regarded  as  numerical  without  the  help  of  some  symbolic 
representation  in  which  a  necessary  element  is  space.  "^^  Indeed  it  is 
everywhere  insisted  that  number  as  discrete  magnitude  is  directly  a 
function  of  space  and  that,  therefore,  it  cannot  apply  to  consciousness 
itself.  But  I  think  it  may  be  fairly  questioned  that  number  magnitude 
in  all  forms  can  properly  be  eliminated  from  consciousness.  Take  for 
example  his  account  of  differences  in  the  feelings  of  effort.  "Our  con- 
sciousness of  an  increase  of  muscular  effort  is  reducible  to  the  twofold 
perception  of  a  greater  number  of  peripheral  sensations,  and  of  a  qualita- 
tive change  occurring  in  some  of  them.  "^^  Thus  in  order  to  escape  the 
notion  of  magnitude  included  in  the  ordinary  idea  of  intensity,  recourse 
is  had  to  the  conception  of  complexity, — of  an  organization  of  a  greater 
number  of  conscious  elements,  though  number  is  of  the  very  essence  of 

8»  Ihid.,  p.  8. 
»'  Ibid.,p.  87. 
«« Ibid.,  p.  26. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  77 

magnitude.  To  be  sure,  the  sensations  are  really  organized;  they  are  not 
left  distinct  like  grains  of  sand ;  but  if  they  be  not  completely  distinct  they 
are  at  least  distinguished  to  just  the  extent  to  which  they  can  be  regarded 
as  "many,"  and  this  manyness  is  not  a  negligible  feature  of  the  situation 
but  the  very  thing  Professor  Bergson  relies  upon  to  escape  the  admission 
of  intensive  magnitude.  And  this  same  explanation  is  given  of  many 
typical  examples  of  apparent  conscious  intensity.  "We  shall  easily 
understand  this  process  if,  for  example,  we  hold  a  pin  in  our  right  hand 
and  prick  our  left  hand  more  and  more  deeply.  At  first  we  shall  feel  as  it 
were  a  tickling,  then  a  touch  which  is  succeeded  by  a  prick,  then  a  pain 
localized  at  a  point,  and  finally  the  spreading  of  this  pain  over  the  sur- 
rounding zone.  And  the  more  we  reflect  on  it,  the  more  clearly  shall  we 
see  that  we  are  here  dealing  with  so  many  quahtatively  distinct  sensa- 
tions, so  many  varieties  of  a  single  species.  But  yet  we  spoke  at  first  of 
one  and  the  same  sensation  which  spread  further  and  further,  of  one 
prick  which  increased  in  intensity.  The  reason  is  that,  without  noticing 
it,  we  localized  in  the  sensation  of  the  left  hand,  which  is  pricked,  the 
progressive  effort  of  the  right  hand,  which  pricks.  We  thus  introduced 
the  cause  into  the  effect,  and  unconsciously  interpreted  quality  as  quan- 
tity, intensity  as  magnitude.  Now  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  intensity  of 
every  representative  sensation  ought  to  be  understood  in  the  same  way.  "^^ 
To  be  sure,  it  is  pointed  out  at  great  length  that  the  multipUcity  here 
demanded  in  order  to  explain  our  seeming  consciousness  of  magnitude  is 
one  of  a  very  unique  sort.  It  is  not  the  plurality  of  spatial  counting. 
Thus  "pure  duration  might  well  be  nothing  but  a  succession  of  quaHtative 
changes,  which  melt  into  and  permeate  each  other,  without  precise  out- 
lines, without  any  tendency  to  externalize  themselves  in  relation  to  one 
another,  without  any  affiliation  with  number:  it  would  be  pure  hetero- 
geneity."^*' But  would  a  multiplicity  without  any  affiliation  with  num- 
ber be  real  multiplicity  at  all?  In  this  connection  the  purpose  is  not  to 
point  out  a  mere  contradiction  in  his  use  of  the  word  "number."  W> 
are  quite  aware  that  he  deliberately  uses  the  word  in  two  senses.  At  the 
very  beginning  of  his  chapter  on  multiplicity  he  speaks,  in  a  footnote,  of 
the  "vital  distinction between  the  multiplicity  of  juxta- 
position and   that  of  interpenetration which  it  is  the 

chief  aim  of  the  present  chapter  to  establish.  "^^    The  only  question  is, 
Does  he  estabhsh  it?     Granted  that  conscious  states  melt  into  and 

"  Ibid.,  pp.  42,  43. 
»°  Ibid.,  pp.  104-105. 
"  IbU.,  p.  75. 


78  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

permeate  each  other  without  definite  outHnes,  still  can  there  be  multi- 
plicity that  is  totally  without  reference  to  number?  If  the  states  com- 
pletely permeated  each  other  we  would  have  simply  one  new  state  in 
place  of  the  old  ones.  But,  as  we  saw  above,  some  trace  of  their  plurality 
or  distinctness  must  be  left  in  order  to  account  for  the  illusion  of  intensive 
magnitude,  which  is  itself  only  an  incorrect  reading  of  this  very  multi- 
plicity. And  in  such  a  case  it  is  futile  to  insist  that  it  is  a  "quaUtative 
multiplicity  with  no  likeness  to  number.  "^^ 

Or  again,  if  it  is  literally  true  that  "thus  in  consciousness  we  find 
states  which  succeed,  without  being  distinguished  from  one  another,"^' 
where  does  the  notion  of  multiplicity  come  in  at  all?  There  must  be 
some  difference  distinguishing  moments  otherwise  we  could  not  even 
"string  them  out"  in  space,  however  unfortunate  such  a  stringing  out 
may  be.  If  the  notes  of  a  tune  really  melt  together  and  completely 
permeate  each  other,  then  why,  as  Mr.  BalsiUie  asks,  would  it  not  be 
better  to  hear  them  all  together,  simultaneously?  As  a  matter  of  neces- 
sity they  must  somehow  (let  us  grant  qualitatively)  be  distinguished,  and 
iust  to  that  degree  they  are  numerable  if  one  choose  to  count  them. 

Without  pushing  the  matter  any  further  the  writer,  at  least,  is  forced 
to  conclude  (1)  that  while  there  may  indeed  be  degrees  (another  quanti- 
tative term!)  of  distinctness  in  the  separateness  of  conscious  elements, 
there  certainly  is  no  proof  of  a  multipHcity  that  involves  no  magnitude 
at  all.  And  (2)  that  if  one  hold  that  conscious  states  (for  instance  the 
perception  of  red)  have  intensity  in  the  same  sense  in  which  they  have 
quaUty  (i.  e.,  in  this  case  the  redness  itself)  then,  even  apart  from  the 
question  of  the  two  kinds  of  multiplicity,  their  intensive  magnitude  has 
not  been  disproved. 

With  this  in  mind  we  must  turn  now  to  his  definite  claim  that  time, 
considered  as  quantitative,  is  identical  with  space.  As  is  evident  from 
the  discussion  at  the  beginning  of  the  paper,  the  writer  is  as  Httle  disposed 
as  any  one  else  to  make  time  an  outer  medium  in  which  experience  exists. 
But  neither  need  space  be  made  an  outer  fact.  Professor  Bergson  holds, 
along  with  the  general  run  of  idealists,  that  space  is  a  product  of  mental 
activity  and  that  without  the  latter  there  would  be  no  such  thing  as  space 
in  existence. ^^  All  parties  to  the  discussion  seem  also  convinced  that  the 
quantitative  time  relations  of  the  facts  of  experience  are,  too,  the  product 
of  consciousness.     The  question,  however,  that  we  mean  next  to  discuss 

^2  Ihid.,  p.  226. 
»'  Ibid.,  p.  227. 
»^  Ibid.,  pp.  92-97. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  79 

is  whether  this  quantitative  time  is  identical  with  space, — that  being  the 
ruhng  conception  in  Professor  Bergson's  view.  The  body  of  modern 
opinion  is  that  time  is  a  relation  of  magnitude  even  though  it  be  not  a 
metaphysical  entity,  and  the  burden  of  proof  must  rest  on  the  side  of  the 
new  interpretation.  And  the  claim  here  made  is  that  time  and  space  are 
sufficiently  and  even  characteristically  distinguished,  simply  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  observer,  as  different  quantitative  relationships  in  the 
field  of  phenomena, — that  one  is  as  dependent  on  consciousness  as  the 
other  even  if  they  do  not  enjoy  equal  universality  of  application. 

Having,  to  his  own  satisfaction,  proved  that  consciousness  itself 
contains  no  trace  of  magnitude,  our  author  regards  time  magnitude  as 
well  as  number  magnitude  as  really  determinations  of  space.  They  have 
been  reduced  to  this  by  a  process  of  elimination, — the  process,  namely,  of 
having  been  shut  out  from  the  inner  realm,  and  all  outer  quantity  is  held 
to  be  the  same.  Thus,  "If  space  is  to  be  defined  as  the  homogeneous,  it 
seems  inversely  that  every  homogeneous  and  unbounded  medium  will  be 
space.  For,  homogeneity  here  consisting  in  the  absence  of  every  quality, 
it  is  hard  to  see  how  two  forms  of  the  homogeneous  could  be  distinguished 
from  one  another.  "^^  Of  course,  if  space  is  to  be  defined  as  the  homo- 
geneous! This  begs  the  whole  question.  It  is  almost  equal  to  saying 
that  if  all  quantity  is  spatial  it  is  all  space.  The  very  question  is  whether 
there  is  not  more  than  one  quantitative  relationship  established  by  con- 
sciousness. The  word  "homogeneous,"  by  the  way,  is  used  throughout 
as  equivalent  to  quantity.  As  his  discussion  of  Kant  and  his  agreement 
with  him  so  far  as  space  is  concerned  go  to  show,  he  does  not  regard  even 
space  as  an  empty  ontological  "room"  for  things  but  rather  as  a  law — 
and  therefore  a  homogeneous  element — in  consciousness.  The  point, 
then,  assumed  in  the  premise  of  his  argument,  is  simply  that  we  cannot 
consistently  have  two  types  of  the  quantitative  in  consciousness.  One 
must  be  thrown  out  as  "  spurious,  "^*'  at  least  in  so  far  as  it  is  quantitative. 
And  in  this  case,  of  course,  it  is  time  that  must  go,  since  space  is  conceded 
in  the  very  definition  of  magnitude.  Perhaps  the  best  way  to  answer 
''uch  an  argument  is  to  reverse  its  application.  Time  or  duration  in 
consciousness  is  simply  and  only  qualitative,  and  so  quality  is  really  time 
and  all  qualitative  distinctions  claiming  to  be  other  than  temporal  are 
ultimately  "spurious"!  Of  course,  the  latter  conclusion  is  not  a  valid 
one,  but  neither  is  the  other  precisely  similar  argument.  Space  is  homo- 
geneous simply  in  the  sense  that,  as  a  general  law,  it  may  be  abstracted 

«5  Ibid.,  p.  98. 
»« Ibid.,  p.  98, 


80  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

from  the  matter  of  experience  to  which  it  is  applied  and  so  all  differentia 
of  specific  cases  be  regarded  as  independent  of  it.  And  to  say  that  it  is 
"the  homogeneous"  would,  from  such  a  point  of  view,  be  identifying  it 
with  all  law  in  general,  which  I  suppose  no  one  cares  to  do.  And  if  its 
homogeneity  be  understood  as  that  of  the  general  law  applicable  to  many 
things  but,  as  a  law,  independent  of  the  specific  features  of  any  particular 
case  (and  Professor  Bergson  claims  to  follow  Kant  in  holding  this  view)" 
then  there  seems  to  be  no  goodreason  why  there  should  not  be  other  laws 
having  the  same  possibility  of  abstraction  and  relating  the  facts  of  experi- 
ence in  another  quantitative  way.  Such  a  law  ideahsts  have  held  time 
to  be. 

Another  difficulty  arises  with  regard  to  the  notion  of  number.  Kant 
held  that  number  is  the  science  of  time  as  geometry  of  space.  Now  while 
it  is  doubtless  at  present  impossible  to  make  such  a  clear-cut  distinction, 
still  the  question  remains.  Is  it  possible,  with  Professor  Bergson,  to  regard 
number  as  wholly  a  determination  of  space?  Since  real  time  exists  only 
in  a  qualitative  realm  which  "has  no  relation  to  number,"  it  is  obvious 
that  Professor  Bergson  must  logically  base  the  fact  of  number  entirely  on 
that  of  space.  Even  counting  must  be  rescued  from  time.  This  is  how 
he  does  it:  "It  is  true  that  we  count  successive  moments  of  duration,  and 
that,  because  of  its  relations  with  number,  time  at  first  seems  to  us  to  be 
a  measurable  magnitude,  just  hke  space.  But  there  is  here  an  important 
distinction  to  be  made.  I  say,  e.  g.,  that  a  minute  has  just  elapsed,  and  I 
mean  by  this  that  a  pendulum,  beating  the  seconds,  has  completed  sixty 
oscillations.  If  I  picture  these  sixty  oscillations  to  myself  all  at  once  by 
a  single  mental  perception,  I  exclude  by  h3^othesis  the  idea  of  a  succes- 
sion. I  do  not  think  of  sixty  strokes  which  succeed  one  another,  but  of 
sixty  points  on  a  fixed  line,  each  of  which  symbolizes,  so  to  speak,  an 
oscillation  of  the  pendulum.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  I  wish  to  picture 
these  sixty  oscillations  in  succession,  but  without  altering  the  way  they 
are  produced  in  space,  I  shall  be  compelled  to  think  of  each  oscillation  to 
the  exclusion  of  the  recollection  of  the  preceding  one,  for  space  has  pre- 
served no  trace  of  it;  but  by  doing  so  I  shall  condemn  myseK  to  remain 
forever  in  the  present;  I  shall  give  up  the  attempt  to  think  of  a  succession 
or  a  duration.  "^^ 

That  is,  in  order  to  count  sixty  and  have  any  clear  conception  of  what 
it  means,  I  must  spread  the  whole  sLxty  out  in  space  and  actually  "picture 

"  Ibid.,  p.  94. 

"  Ibid.,  pp.  104-105. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  81 

these  sixty  oscillations  to  myself  all  at  once  by  a  single  mental  percep- 
tion!" But  certainly  such  an  amazing  scope  of  attention  is  hopelessly 
beyond  our  reach.  According  to  Professor  Wundt,  eight  is  the  maximum 
plurality  of  which  we  can  be  distinctly  conscious  in  any  single  act  of 
attention.  In  which  case  we  seem  to  face  the  perfectly  simple  alternative : 
Either  counting  is,  at  least  in  part,  a  time  function,  which  introduces  the 
element  of  numerical  quantity  into  succession,  or  else  our  real  mathe- 
matics is  limited  to  a  number  scale  of  eight  units  only,  all  higher  numbers 
being  purely  symbolic  like  i/If.  The  truth  of  the  first  alternative  would 
seriously  disfigure  the  general  scheme  of  Professor  Bergson's  theory;  the 
second  would  be  somewhat  of  a  handicap  for  the  rest  of  the  world. 

But  our  author  is  in  most  cases  wiUing  enough  to  follow  out  his  ideas 
to  their  most  extreme  consequences.  For  instance,  if  time  is  not  quanti- 
tative at  all  and  if  all  magnitude  is  space,  then  not  time  nor  even  motion, 
but  only  space,  is  measurable.  This  conclusion,  too,  is  definitely  drawn 
and  insisted  upon.  When  we  set  out  to  measure  motion  or  velocity,  it 
only  means  that  "we  are  to  note  the  exact  moment  at  which  the  motion 
begins,  i.  e.,  the  coincidence  of  an  external  change  with  one  of  our  psychic 
states;  we  are  to  note  the  moment  at  which  the  motion  ends,  that  is  to 
say,  another  simultaneity ;  finally  we  are  to  measure  the  space  traversed, 
the  only  thing,  in  fact,  which  is  really  measurable.  Hence  there  is  no 
question  here  of  duration,  but  only  of  space  and  simultaneities."^^  But 
does  this  ingenious  method  really  eliminate  the  "t"  from  the  mathemati- 
cal notion  of  velocity  ds/^dt,  or  take  away  its  quantitative  character, 
which  is  the  same  thing,  since  mathematics  truly  enough  knows  no  quali- 
tative differences?  In  the  first  place  we  must  notice  a  vestige  of  the 
older,  quantitative  conception  in  the  fixing  of  "simultaneities."  To  be 
aware  that  various  things  are  in  the  same  plane  in  space,  for  instance,  is 
to  localize  them  just  as  truly  as  to  show  that  they  were  in  different  planes. 
More  than  that;  to  show  that  they  are  all  in  this  plane  of  two  dimensions 
means  that  we  have  calculated  their  position  primarily  with  reference  to 
the  other,  the  third,  dimension  which  as  a  matter  of  statement  does  not 
seem  to  be  a  part  of  the  plane  at  all.  The  plane  could  not  be  defined 
apart  from  the  fact  that  it  extends  zero  distance  in  one  certain  direction. 
And  in  a  precisely  similar  way,  it  is  measuring  their  time  locus  just  as 
truly  to  say  that  two  events  are  simultaneous  as  to  say  that  they  are  so 
far  apart  in  the  time  series.  A  moment  without  duration  at  all,  an  abso- 
lute simultaneity,  is  at  the  same  time  a  determination  made  with  refer- 

'*  Ibid.,  pp.  115-116. 


82  SOME  VIEWS  OE  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

ence  to  length  of  duration  just  as  a  geometrical  plane  receives  its  character 
as  two-dimensional  precisely  through  its  relation  to  that  third  dimension 
which  it  does  not  include.  To  appeal  to  simultaneities  is  not,  therefore, 
to  escape  the  necessity  of  regarding  time  as  quantitative  or  measurable; 
rather  it  is  to  assert  it. 

And  even  apart  from  a  discussion  of  his  explanation  by  simultaneities, 
we  might  well  have  a  priori  misgivings  with  regard  to  any  method  that 
professed  to  know  velocity  without  measuring  time.  The  simple  formula 
ds/dt  must  remain  a  constant  reminder  that  something  is  left  out  in 
such  an  attempt.  If  we  accept  all  of  Professor  Bergson's  conclusions,  we 
are,  of  course,  compelled  to  regard  the"t"hereas  a  spurious  form  of  "s" 
in  which  case  the  expression  for  velocity  reduces  to  ds/fds , — that  is,  it  is 
defined  with  reference  to  space  alone  and  so  becomes  identical  with  dis- 
tance. But  that  is  not  velocity  at  all  in  any  sense  of  the  word !  Or  else 
the  "t"  is  purely  qualitative,^"''  in  which  case  differential  "t"  becomes  a 
very  rare  specimen  of  absurdity,  as  does  also  all  mathematics  that  pro- 
fesses to  deal  with  it.  And  indeed  something  not  unlike  this  is  definitely 
taught  in  the  idea  that  real  motion  is  qualitative  and  so  beyond  direct 
scientific  apprehension.  But  yet  it  is  insisted  that  in  some  incompre- 
hensible manner^"^  mathematics  is  able  to  calculate  future  simultaneities 
through  the  very  use  of  this  "t"  as  quantitative.  If  true,  it  is  certainly 
a  most  noteworthy  fact  that  a  concept  known  to  be  wholly  and  radically 
false  should  at  the  same  time  yield  conclusions  that  are  universally  true. 

It  is  perhaps  unprofessional  and  more  or  less  an  "argumentum  ad 
populum"  to  point  out  a  lack  of  harmony  between  a  technical  conclusion 
and  the  views  of  common  sense,  but  the  requirements  of  a  view  that  time 
is  not  measurable  offer  unusual  temptations  to  such  a  procedure.  All 
reference  to  a  time  as  long  or  short  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  utterly  unper- 
missible.  We  cannot  speak  of  more  or  less  time  in  any  sense  because  that 
is  to  introduce  the  idea  of  magnitude  again.  Many  seemingly  grotesque 
conclusions  result  in  this  way  from  a  consistent  denial  of  the  quantitative 
character  of  time,  but  under  the  circumstances  we  must  resist  their  allure- 
ments. Suffice  only  to  notice  how  such  a  denial  reduces  the  ordinary 
suppositions  of  common  sense  to  hopeless  raving  and  flatly  contradicts 
the  data  of  all  simple  introspection. 

But  to  get  back  to  his  explicit  arguments,  we  must  notice  one  more 
consideration  that  is  found  again  and  again  in  Professor  Bergson's  writings. 
The  mind  can  construe  only  simultaneities.     It  tries  to  understand  the 

i»o  Cf.  Matter  and  Memory,  pp.  246-259. 
"'  Time  and  Free  Will,  p.  227. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  83 

flow  of  time  as  a.  sum  of  these  just  as  it  tries  to  construe  motion  as  a 
succession  of  positions,  i.  e.,  of  stops.  Everyone  is  familiar  with  his 
famous  cinematograph  metaphor.  The  mind  sees  the  reahty  of  nature 
in  the  form  of  images  which  are  always  cross-sections  and  contain  in 
themselves  no  movement  or  action.  As  simultaneities  they  represen 
space  and  not  time.  Therefore,  once  more,  space  is  the  fact  knowable  by 
intelUgence,  conceptual  time  is  only  space,  and  real  duration  turns  out  to 
be  unrepresentable.  The  paradoxes  of  Zeno  are  thus  the  direct  result  of 
this  tendency  to  see  time  as  a  succession  of  simultaneities  and  motion  as 
a  succession  of  stops,^"-  whereas  both  are  continuous  and  so  irreducible 
even  to  an  infinite  number  of  mere  cross-sections.  But  it  is  certainly 
difficult  to  see  how  time  and  space  are  to  be  so  distinguished.  Of  course, 
time  is  not  a  succession  of  simultaneities  nor  motion  of  stops.  But  then, 
neither  is  space  a  summation  of  planes.  Neither  space  nor  time,  that  is 
to  say,  is  a  sum  of  zeros,  as  our  differential  expressions  when  pushed  to  the 
limit  seem  to  indicate.  And  if  we  admit  that  the  differential  analysis 
only  implies  their  infinite  divisibility,  and  therefore  their  continuous 
character,  the  fact  remains  that  both  space  and  time  are  subject  to  the 
same  interpretation  and  so  no  basis  is  afforded  for  relating  them  in  such 
utterly  different  ways  to  consciousness.  The  parts  of  space  are  not 
separated  from  each  other  by  definite  boundaries  chiefly,  I  suppose, 
because  space  is  not  an  addition  of  separate  parts.  Considered  as  a  law 
of  mental  synthesis  either  space  or  time  is  infinitely  divisible  in  that  one 
would  never  reach  a  point  where  he  could  not  apply  his  analyzing  any 
further;  considered  as  embodied  in  concrete  experience,  neither  is  divisible 
beyond  a  certain  minimum  discernible.  There  is  no  basis  for  a  distinction 
on  this  score. 

This  point  is  well  illustrated  in  the  case  of  motion  which,  though 
there  be  "  nothing  in  common  between  quality  and  quantity, "  seems  to  be 
very  intimately  related  to  both  space  and  time.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  as 
we  saw  above,  Professor  Bergson  puts  motion  on  the  side  of  time  as  a 
continuous  quality  and  therefore  unrepresentable  by  the  intellect.  But 
motion  is  equally  a  function  of  space  and  time,  and  it  is  obvious  enough 
that  it  cannot  be  a  continuous  function  with  reference  to  one  of  them  and 
discontinuous  with  reference  to  the  other, — ^^at  least  if  uniform  motion  is 
possible,  and  I  am  incUned  to  think  that  the  same  consideration  would 
hold  for  all  cases.  At  any  rate  the  one  case  is  enough  for  our  present 
argument. 

"2  Matter  and  Memory,  p.  252. 


84  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

For  the  reasons  above  briefly  outlined  we  are  unable  to  accept  his 
conclusions  (a)  that  quantitative  time  is  really  space,  (b)  that  therefore, 
regarded  as  coordinate,  space  and  time  cannot  be  characteristically  dis- 
tinguished, and  finally  (c)  that  the  reality  of  time  must  therefore  be 
sought  in  some  altogether  different  sphere.  On  the  contrary,  we  are 
still  inclined  to  insist  that  space  and  time  are  both  constitutive  relation- 
ships in  experience,  that  both  owe  their  very  existence  to  the  relating 
activity  that  functions  there,  and  that  therefore,  in  the  last  analysis,  the 
consciousness  that  establishes  these  relationships  is  in  its  existence  time- 
less. And  the  suspicion  that  we  have  harbored  in  all  the  above  discus- 
sion, and  which,  in  conclusion,  we  shall  seek  to  justify  is  this:  The  con- 
ceptual time  that  Professor  Bergson  dismisses  as  a  spurious  idea  because 
it  is  quantitative,  is  approximately  what  the  so-called  absolutist  regards 
as  the  characteristic  time  synthesis  in  phenomena,  and  that  the  pure 
duration  that  is  not  measurable  or  quantitative  in  any  sense  and  is  thus 
so  thoroughly  distinguished  from  conceptual  time,  possesses  a  remarkable 
similarity  to  what  others  have  regarded  as  timelessness.  This  comparison 
will  be  elaborated  by  pointing  out  a  number  of  ways  in  which  his  particu- 
lar arguments  and  conclusions  with  respect  to  this  pure  duration  resemble 
the  arguments  and  conclusions  which  ordinarily,  and  particularly  in  the 
work  of  Professor  Eucken,  pertain  primarily  to  a  timeless  order. 

Consider  for  a  moment  his  argument  that  a  pure,  qualitative  time  is 
necessary  to  account  for  the  continuity  of  sense  perception  and,  as  closely 
allied  with  this,  the  phenomena  of  memory.  The  facts  are  these:  The 
process  of  perception  is,  physically  (i.  e.,  spatially)  considered,  a  well 
nigh  infinite  plurality.  When  we  see  a  red  color  it  means  that  approxi- 
mately 400  bilUon  separate  and  distinct  light  waves  impinge  upon  our 
retina.  Considered  from  the  standpoint  of  measurable  time,  every 
individual  wave  has  its  particular  date  in  the  series  to  the  exclusion  of 
every  other.  And  yet  we  do  not  experience  the  now  of  each  of  these 
impacts  separately  but  countless  miUions  of  them  fuse  together  to  give 
one  conscious  visual  percept.  And  the  only  way  to  explain  this  collective 
immediacy  is  to  suppose  that  somehow  consciousness  is  not  squeezed  into 
the  narrow  confines  of  the  mathematical  present  but  transcends  the 
series  at  least  to  the  degree  that  it  is  concretely  present  to  a  plurality  of 
successive  elements.  Now  this  very  point  is  insisted  upon  in  Matter  and 
Memory, ^^^  except  that  there  "length  of  rhythm"  is  the  name  given  to 
what  others  might  call  degree  of  transcendence  or  time-span.    Indeed  he 

103  p.  272  ff. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  85 

even  follows  Professor  Royce  in  concluding  that  there  might  be  beings  of 
immensely  wider  "rhythm"  who  would  take  in  whole  millenniums  of 
time  in  a  single  glance.  And  on  the  other  hand,  of  course,  the  quantita- 
tive time  of  physical  succession  whose  present  is  the  mathematical  limit 
of  an  infinite  converging  series,  is  only  conceptual  time,  i.  e.,  ultimately, 
space.  And  the  property  of  consciousness  by  which  it  is  able  to  be 
immediately  present  to  a  vast  number  of  these  simple  "nows"  and  fuse 
them  all  together  in  one  percept,  is  real  time,  pure  duration.  Exactly 
the  same  argument  is  used  on  both  sides  to  prove  exactly  the  same  thing 
and  they  can  be  made  almost  interchangeable  by  simply  reversing  the 
terms  "transcendence"  and  "pure  duration."  It  is  obviously  a  matter 
of  rhetoric  only  which  we  shall  use. 

Similarly  in  the  phenomena  of  mental  reproduction.  Suppose  I  look 
at  a  field  of  snow  from  the  comfortable  vantage  ground  of  a  steam  heated 
room.  Although  I  feel  no  present  sensations  of  cold,  and  although,  on 
the  other  hand,  coldness  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  visual  element,  still  I 
seem  to  see  that  it  is  cold  outside, — the  snow  "looks"  cold.  The  simple 
fact  seems  to  be  that  the  contents  of  past  experience  may  be  in  a  strange 
but  real  way  embodied  in  the  present  percept.  In  fact,  without  such 
relationship  to  the  past  it  is  not  difficult  to  show  that  the  sensation  of  the 
present  instant  would  be  quite  unintelligible.  This  is  the  heart  of  truth 
in  the  contentions  of  the  Medieval  Realists  and  has  in  the  last  century 
been  elaborately  treated  in  the  writings  of  T.  H.  Green.  And  for  sake  of 
brevity  we  may  couple  with  this  fact  of  perception  the  closely  related 
fact  of  memory.  (Professor  Bergson  insists  that  the  former  is  never 
found  without  the  latter  anyhow.)  When,  for  example,  I  remember  how 
cold  the  snow  was  on  a  certain  definite  past  instance,  I  only  make  explicit 
what  was  implicit  in  the  above-mentioned  visual  perception  of  "cold 
snow."  The  memory  image,  as  an  image,  is  present  in  the  actual  and 
only  sense  of  the  word  and  yet  I  am  conscious  of  it  as  a  past,  not  a  present, 
fact  that  now  presents  itself  to  me.  The  physical  disturbance  in  the 
brain  is  a  present  event  and,  as  definitely  related  in  an  order  of  succession, 
so  is  the  mental  image  itself.  But  somehow  its  home,  its  proper  element, 
is  the  past;  it  embodies  in  its  own  immediate  content  a  part  of  a  vanished 
world.  And  Professor  Bergson  is  unquestionably  right  in  insisting  that, 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  mutual  externality  of  the  moments  of  suc- 
cession, such  a  living  past  is  beyond  accounting  for.^°^  But  the  point  we 
want  to  urge  here  is  simply.  Why  call  this  capacity  of  consciousness  to 

'"^  Matter  and  Memory,  pp.  85-105. 


86  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

deal  with  what  lies  beyond  the  present  fleeting  moment  "real  duration"? 
Why  not  better  call  it  some  sort  of  transcendence  of  the  time  series?  In 
Mind  for  1909  Mr.  A.  R.  Whately  discusses  exactly  the  same  point  and 
from  the  very  same  arguments  concludes  that  "the  principle  of  separa- 
tion lies  on  the  side  of  the  temporal  self,  the  principle  of  unity  on  that  of 
the  eternal,"  which  is  a  "doctrine  of  the  immanence  of  the  ego  in  its 
states and  yet  of  transcendence."^"^  This  latter  termi- 
nology is  the  one  current  at  present,  but  it  is  obviously  essentially  the 
same  conception  of  consciousness  as  that  which  Professor  Bergson  sets 
forth  in  such  a  new  garb.  And  where  the  conceptions  are  not  materially 
altered,  it  is  certainly  better  in  the  interests  of  lucidity  if  nothing  else,  to 
continue  to  use  terms  in  the  same  way. 

This  relationship  of  consciousness  to  memory  is  closely  connected 
with  another  favorite  fact  of  those  who  hold  views  analogous  to  the 
Kantian.  Perhaps  indeed  it  is  only  stating  the  same  fact  in  converse 
form.  Just  so  far  as  consciousness  is  immediately  in  touch  with  past  and 
future  (however  narrow  its  horizon  may  be)  to  that  extent  we  may  say 
that  its  "present"  is  not  the  mere  point  dividing  past  and  future,  but 
transcends  it.  The  consciousness  of  the  present  moment  carries  a  heavy 
ballast  of  expectation  and  memory  and  these  to  a  large  degree  make  the 
present  what  it  is.  So  runs  the  traditional  description.  Let  us  now 
compare  the  accounts  given  by  the  two  men  whose  views  of  time  are 
ostensibly  so  antithetical.  Professor  Bergson  says,  "Pure  duration  is 
the  form  which  the  succession  of  our  conscious  states  assumes  when  our 
ego  lets  itself  live,  when  it  refrains  from  separating  its  present  state  from 
its  former  states.  For  this  purpose  it  need  not  be  entirely  absorbed  in 
the  passing  sensation  or  idea;  for  then,  on  the  contrary,  it  would  no  longer 
endure.  Nor  need  it  forget  its  former  states;  it  is  enough  that,  in  recalling 
these  states,  it  does  not  set  them  alongside  its  actual  state  as  one  point 
alongside  another,  but  forms  both  the  past  and  the  present  states  into  an 
organic  whole,  as  happens  when  we  recall  the  notes  of  a  tune,  melting,  so 
to  speak,  into  one  another,  "i""  Compare  with  this  the  following  from 
Professor  Eucken:  "Die  Vergangenheit  ist  dann  nicht  mehr  eine  blosse 
Vergangenheit,  sie  kann  ein  Stiick  einer  zeitliberlegenen  Gegenwart 
werden  und  damit  eine  Sache  eignen  Lebens,  unablassiger  Arbeit  blei- 
ben."^°^    And  such  parallelism  of  statements  on  both  sides  might  be 

"5  A.  R.  Whately,  The  Higher  Unmediacy,  Mind  for  1909,  p.  373.     Cf.  also,  Eucken, 
Geist.  Strom.,  bottom  of  p.  270. 
'""  Time  and  Free  Will,  p.  100. 
"'  Geist.  Strom.,  p.  269. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  87 

indefinitely  mulliplied.  For  both  authors  the  being  of  consciousness 
vastly  transcends  the  present  instant;  the  chief  distinction  between  the 
two  is  that  one  calls  it  "transcendence"  while  the  other  does  not. 

In  another  place  several  paragraphs  have  been  devoted  to  showing 
that  time,  succession,  as  a  relationship  in  which  phenomena  stand,  is 
meaningless  apart  from  the  activity  of  intelligence.  That  is,  time 
relationships  are  so  much  and  so  characteristically  the  work  of  conscious- 
ness that  any  reality,  to  be  so  related,  must  be  thought  of  as  present  to 
some  consciousness.  And  this  is,  in  principle,  no  new  contention.  It  is 
at  least  as  old  as  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason.  And  now  let  us  compare 
that  particular  idea  with  the  corresponding  feature  of  the  new  philosophy. 
"What  duration  is  there  existing  outside  us?  The  present  only,  or,  if  we 
prefer  the  expression,  simultaneity.  No  doubt  external  things  change, 
but  their  moments  do  not  succeed  one  another,  if  we  retain  the  ordinary 
meaning  of  the  word,  except  for  a  consciousness  which  keeps  them  in 
mind.  "^"^  That  again  is  certainly  not  a  radical  alteration  of  fundamental 
conceptions  but  chiefly  an  interchange  of  words  with  ordinary  idealism. 
Kant  held  that  time  relations  (those  of  before  and  after,  succession,  etc.) 
are  established  in  the  "synthetic  unity  of  apperception  "  and  if  we  choose 
to  simplify  the  statement  by  saying  that  they  are  the  work  of  the  knowing 
consciousness,  the  essential  principle  is  the  same.  And  in  this  argument 
Professor  Bergson  shows  that  the  time  relations  of  "phenomena"  are 
founded  upon  the  superior  reality  of  consciousness  but  adds  that,  for 
that  reason,  it  is  not  really  time,  but  space,  that  appears  there.  He 
shows  that  the  existence  of  consciousness  is  assumed  by,  and  is  therefore 
logically  prior  to,  the  fact  of  temporal  succession,  but  insists  that  in  that 
account  consciousness  only  really  endures.  Why  not,  then,  apply  the 
same  process  to  the  idea  of  space?  As  was  noticed  above,  he  holds  that 
space  is  the  product  of  mental  activity.  Take  that  away,  then,  and 
there  would  be  no  spatial  relationships  at  all.  Then  why  not  say  that 
objective  space  is  really  only  conceptual  space  and  that  "pure"  extension 
is  only  to  be  found  in  the  mind?  The  reason  here  is  ob^'ious  enough. 
To  be  the  ground  of  the  very  reality  of  space  the  mind  could  not,  without 
a  hopeless  circle  in  reasoning,  be  regarded  as  spatial  in  its  own  existence, 
and  the  word  "space"  is  too  closely  associated  with  the  actual  space 
relationships  of  phenomena  for  it  ever  to  be  used  as  meaning  really  the 
transcendent  ground  on  which  these  relationships  depend.  But  because 
the  very  fact  of  time  has  less  concreteness  and  more  ambiguity  and  mys- 

'««  Time  atid  Free  Will,  p.  227. 


OO  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

tery  about  it,  it  is  possible  to  use  the  word  in  these  two  very  different 
ways. 

And  before  leaving  this  feature  of  the  subject  it  would  be  well  to  point 
out  the  close  analogy  of  the  above  idealistic  argument  of  Professor  Berg- 
son  with  the  same  much-quoted  argument  of  Professor  Eucken.  The 
relationship  of  succession  in  the  world  of  facts  which  the  former  calls 
conceptual  time  is  exactly  what  the  latter  describes  as  the  "nachein- 
ander"  of  the  parts  of  time;  and  the  "real  duration"  in  the  conscious  self 
by  which  the  very  series  of  succession  is  explained  by  Professor  Bergson, 
is  in  this  sense  identical  with  "das  iiberlegende  Geistesleben "  which  for 
Professor  Eucken  makes  the  synthesis  of  this  hopeless  multiplicity  possi- 
ble. The  chief  difference  is  that  the  characteristic  that  one  philosopher 
calls  "real"  time  the  other  labels  "timeless." 

Every  reader  of  philosophy  is  familiar  with  the  metaphor  of  the  "man 
on  the  bank"  who  only  can  know  the  flow  of  the  stream.  One  does  not 
see  any  movement  when  he  is  being  carried  by  an  ocean  current  precisely 
because  he  himself  moves  along  with  everything.  And  so  we  have  often 
heard  it  contended  that,  in  order  for  us  to  know  the  succession  of  moments 
as  a  succession,  the  standpoint  from  which  consciousness  surveys  it  must 
be  to  some  degree  independent  of  the  flow.  In  Time  and  Free  Will  we 
find  this  venerable  (and  certainly  valid)  argument  in  the  following  dis- 
guise: "Let  us  imagine  a  straight  Hne  of  unlimited  length,  and  on  this 
line  a  material  point  '  A '  which  moves.  If  this  point  were  conscious  of 
itself,  it  would  feel  itself  change,  since  it  moves;  it  would  perceive  a 
succession;  but  would  this  succession  assume  for  it  the  form  of  a  line? 
No  doubt  it  would,  if  it  could  rise,  so  to  speak,  above  the  line  which  it 
traverses,  and  perceive  simultaneously  several  points  of  it  in  juxtaposi- 
tion: but  by  doing  so  it  would  form  the  idea  of  space,  and  it  is  in  space 
and  not  in  pure  duration  that  it  would  see  displayed  the  changes  which 
it  undergoes.  "^"^  If  one  keep  it  constantly  in  mind  that,  with  Professor 
Bergson,  quantitative  time  is  space  and  "real  time"  contains  no  relation- 
ships of  measurable  time  at  all,  it  is  evident  that  in  his  argument  here 
quoted  we  have  a  new  edition  of  exactly  the  same  line  of  reasoning  that 
many  "absolutists"  use  to  show  the  transcendence  of  the  time  flow  by 
the  self  that  knows  it, — and,  we  might  add,  to  the  extent  to  which  it 
knows  it.  The  purpose  here,  of  course,  is  not  to  discuss  the  validity  of 
either  argument  or  both  but  only  to  point  out  the  similarity  that  under- 
lies the  outer  contrast  in  their  terms. 

'"9  Time  and  Free  Will,  pp.  102-103. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  89 

And  along  this  line,  too,  it  is  impossible  to  keep  from  mentioning  the 
striking  similarity  between  Professor  Bergson  and  Professor  Royce^^"  in 
their  treatment  of  the  "specious  present. "  That  we  should,  in  one  grasp 
of  perception,  be  aware  of  a  whole  series  of  events  that,  considered  from 
the  standpoint  of  their  before-and-after,  are  quite  distinct,  is  at  first 
sight  a  startling  paradox, — even  if  it  does  turn  out  upon  reflection  that 
without  such  an  inclusive  survey  we  could  never  be  conscious  of  succes- 
sion at  all.  In  "The  World  and  the  Individual"  this  seeming  paradox  is 
beautifully  illustrated  by  reference  to  our  consciousness  of  a  musical 
phrase  or  melody.  The  very  condition  of  its  being  a  melody  is  that  we 
should  hold  the  successive  notes  apart  in  time  and  yet  the  primary  condi- 
tion of  our  knowing  it  as  a  melody  is  that  we  should  be  conscious  of  its 
movement  as  a  whole.  And  it  is  a  question  of  the  range  of  consciousness 
simply  (not  of  the  events  as  a  series)  whether  we  will  be  conscious  of  a 
minute  or  million  years  in  this  direct  and  immediate  way.  And  now, 
oddly  enough,  this  very  figure  of  speech  that  is  so  prominent  in  Professor 
Royce's  discussion  of  time,  is  the  identical  one  in  terms  of  which  the 
French  Professor  likes  best  to  explain  and  enforce  his  own  view.^^^  This 
would  not  be  surprising  in  the  least  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  the  two 
writers  seem  to  hold  such  opposing  views,  the  one  insisting  that  even  the 
human  consciousness  is  in  its  small  way  an  expression  of  the  Eternal,  and 
the  other  that  consciousness  alone  possesses  real  duration.  And  con- 
versely, if  we  find  that  "pure  duration"  is  related  to  the  plurality  of 
succeeding  moments  in  precisely  the  same  way  in  which  "Eternity"  is 
related  to  it,  we  cannot  well  escape  the  suspicion  that  the  Eternity  and 
pure  duration  here  in  question  have  very  much  in  common. 

But  that  is  a  digression.  In  other  respects  the  thought  of  Professor 
Bergson  only  slightly  resembles  that  of  Professor  Royce.  In  his  opposi- 
tion to  rationalism  of  all  sorts  he  is  much  more  closely  related  to  Professor 
Eucken,  and  to  the  more  explicit  comparison  of  these  two  we  must  now 
return. 

It  was  pointed  out  at  length  in  our  foregoing  discussion  of  the  Jena 
philosopher  that  the  Geistesleben  of  his  view  is  not  equally  concerned  with 
all  events  in  time  nor  equally  present  in  all  individuals.  It  is  only  in  the 
crises  that  the  Eternal  comes  explicitly  into  view,  whether  we  refer  to 
the  crises  in  the  life  of  a  man  or  the  history  of  a  nation.  The  great  world 
of  Truth  and  Life  is  always  there,  always  real;  but  much  of  the  time  we 

"'»  The  World  and  the  Individual,  Vol.  ii,  Ch.  3. 

>"  Time  and  Free  Will,  pp.  100,  105,  111,  123,  127,  etc. 


90  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

live  in  a  mechanical  way,  oblivious  to  wider  relationships.  We  walk 
with  our  eyes  fixed  on  the  ground,  and  forget  the  sun  that  makes  our  very 
perception  of  it  possible.^^^  The  point  of  interest  now  is  to  see  how  this 
feature,  too,  of  the  Geistesleben  is  paralleled  in  the  Bergsonian  world  of 
pure  duration.  The  self  that  is  not  in  quantitative  (conceptual)  time  is 
by  no  means  always  prominent  in  human  experience  and  conduct.  We 
are  occasionally  aware  of  the  deeper  self,  "but  the  moments  at  which  we 
thus  grasp  ourselves  are  rare,  and  that  is  just  why  we  are  rarely  free. ""' 
"It  is  at  the  great  and  solemn  crisis,  decisive  of  our  reputation  with 
others,  and  yet  more  with  ourselves,  that  we  choose  in  defiance  of  what  is 
conventionally  called  a  motive,  and  this  absence  of  any  tangible  reason 
is  the  more  striking  the  deeper  our  freedom  goes."^^^  Thus  free  and 
independent  personality  turns  out  to  be  a  possibility  rather  than  a  gift; 
one's  transcendence  of  the  changing,  mechanical  details  of  his  general 
experience  is  a  function  of  the  spiritual  earnestness  of  his  dealings  with 
life  and  the  breadth  of  vision  he  may  attain.  "  Wie  weit  aber  das  Leben 
sie  uberwindet  und  eine  iiberzeitliche  Gegenwart  erreicht,  das  hangt  vor 
allem  an  der  geistigen  Kraft,  die  es  aufzubieten  vermag;  bei  uns  selbst 
steht  es  schliesslich,  ob  der  Schwerpunkt  unseres  Seins  ins  Vergangliche 
oder  ins  Unvergangliche  fallt."^^^ 

And  in  both,  also,  is  this  intervention  of  the  higher  principle  of  a  more 
or  less  nonrational  type.  The  great  objection  that  Professor  Eucken 
urges  against  the  absolute  idealism  of  the  Hegelian  type  is  just  that  it 
tries  to  substitute  "Wissen"  for  "Leben," — that  it  dissipates  the  con- 
crete into  a  mere  shadow  realm  of  formal  ideas.  It  is  a  "transformation 
of  the  whole  of  reality  into  a  tissue  of  logical  relations.  And  this  neces- 
sarily destroys  the  immediacy  of  life  in  all  its  forms.  It  banishes  all 
psychical  inwardness  and  at  the  same  time  all  spiritual  content.  ""^    The 

"mere  manipulation  of  concepts is  like  turning  a  screw 

in  a  vacuum  where  it  meets  with  no  resistance.  "^^'^  The  philosophy  of 
the  Geistesleben  is  no  mere  intellectualism.  The  Absolute  is  not  a  Neo- 
Platonic  pyramid  of  concepts,  but  an  inner  spiritual  power.  For  Profes- 
sor Bergson,  similarly,  the  real  self  beneath  the  formal  crust  is  something 
radically  different  than  a  logic  machine.     Indeed,  as  we  saw  above,  it  is 

"^  Cf.  Hauptprobleme,  p.  26,  and  Geist.  Strom.,  p.  266. 

"3  Time  and  Free  Will,  p.  231. 

''*Ibid.,p.  170. 

""  Geist.  Stom.  p.  271. 

"*  Problem  of  Human  Life,  p.  502. 

>"  Ibid.,  p.  503. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  91 

at  once  the  service  and  the  danger  of  intellect  that  it  does  represent  Life 
in  the  form  of  concepts.  To  know  the  "elan  vital"  as  it  really  is  one 
must  turn  back  to  the  simple  immediacy  of  feeling,  something  roughly 
resembling,  perhaps,  the  experience  that  accompanies  instinct  at  its 
best."*  And  accordingly  when  this  mystic  power  that  knows  no  explana- 
tion in  words  and  concepts  (and  "there  is  no  common  measure  between 
mind  and  language"  since  the  latter  is  incurably  infected  with  the  exter- 
nalities of  space)— when  this  power  does  rise,  now  and  then,  into  active 
domination,  it  is  equally  without  rational  or  logical  ado.  On  frequent 
important  occasions  "we  wish  to  know  the  reason  why  we  have  made  up 
our  mind,  and  we  find  that  we  have  decided  without  any  reason,  and 
perhaps  even  against  every  reason.     But,  in  certain  cases,  that  is  the  best 

of  reasons and  this  absence  of  any  tangible  reason  is  the 

more  striking  the  deeper  our  freedom  goes.  ""^  Thus  in  both  systems  of 
thought  the  back-lying  world  of  Power  carries  ideas,  concepts,  reason- 
ings, on  its  surface,  but  only  there;  its  inner  reality  is  not  a  structure  of 
Reason. 

And  with  this  retreat  to  inner  immediacy  and  intuition,  it  is  not 
strange  that  both  should  find  a  significant  expression  of  this  ultimate 
Life  in  the  creativeness  of  artistic  production.  Indeed,  for  the  German, 
art  may  even  be  an  indispensible  means  to  the  real  unfolding  of  life. 
Referring  to  "der  nordische  Mensch"  he  says:  "so  bleibt  ihm  leicht  das 
•Innerste  der  Seele  unausgesprochen  und  seine  eigne  Tiefe  verschlossen. 
Daher  wird  ihm  die  Kunst  ein  unentbehrliches  jSIittel,  sich  selbst  zu 
finden,  sein  Eigentum  in  vollen  Besitz  zu  nehmen,  die  Kluft  im  eignen 
Wesen  irgend  zu  schliessen.  "^^o  ^nd  in  a  very  similar  vein  writes  Pro- 
fessor Bergson:  "The  intention  of  life,  the  simple  movement  that  runs 
through  the  lines,  that  binds  them  together  and  gives  them  significance, 

escapes  it  (intellectual  perception) This  intention  is  just 

what  the  artist  tries  to  regain,  in  placing  himself  back  within  the  object 
by  a  kind  of  sympathy,  in  breaking  down,  by  an  effort  of  intuition,  the 

barrier  that  space  puts  up  between  him  and  his  model.  "^-^ 

"Art  lives  on  creation  and  implies  a  latent  belief  in  the  spontaneity  of 
nature.  "122 

"*  Creative  Evolution,  p.  176. 
»9  Ti7ne  attd  Free  Will,  p.  170. 
'20  Geist.  Strom.,  p.  341,  top. 
1"  Creative  Evolution,  p.  177. 
'22  Ibid.,  p.  45. 


92  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

In  short,  for  both  our  philosophers,  the  great  and  underlying  Reality 
that  finds  expression  in  all  conative  thought  and  action,  in  all  originality 
and  independence,  all  striving  and  progress,  is  a  Life  that  does  not  fall 
apart  into  the  multiplicity  of  successive  moments  of  measurable  time  but 
owns  instead  an  intimate  inner  organization.  Oddly  enough  both  men 
have  been  accused  by  reviewers  of  falling  into  a  dualism  by  failing  to  show 
sufficient  connection  between  the  outer  temporal  process  and  this  inner 
higher  being.^^^  It  can  be  no  accident  that  two  conceptions,  though  they 
have  names  as  different  as  " Zeitloskeit "  and  "dure  pure"  should  thus  be 
criticized  for  the  same  shortcoming  with  reference  to  the  series  that  we 
ordinarily  call  temporal.  The  reason  lies  in  the  fundamental  similarity 
of  the  two  views. 

This  interpretation  is  corroborated,  too,  by  another  rather  interesting 
coincidence.  Professor  Bergson's  pure  duration  as  it  is  supposed  to 
characterize  the  "elan  vital"  has  been  identified  with  the  Eternity  of  the 
absolutist  philosophers  by  two  writers  who  seem  at  least  to  have  opposite 
interests  in  doing  so.  M.  Moisant,  writing  on  "God  in  the  Philosophy 
of  Henri  Bergson,  "^^*  finds  the  consciousness  of  the  pure  duration  to  be 
an  expression  of  the  Eternal.  This  article  is  naturally  favorable  in  its 
attitude.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  BalsiUie  discusses  "Bergson  on  Time 
and  Free  Will"^^^  in  a  not  altogether  favorable  tone,  and  concludes  what 
is  perhaps  his  chief  criticism  as  follows:  "The  distinction  between  past, 
present,  and  future  disappears,  and  our  author  virtually  assents  to  the 
views  of  certain  Neo-Hegelians,  that  beneath  our  finite  form  of  conscious- 
ness there  is  a  real  mental  life  in  an  eternal  present  which  a  more  attentive 
psychology  can  reach."  In  other  words,  an  interpretation  of  his  pure 
duration  analogous  to  that  urged  in  this  paper  is  made  by  one  man  to 
defend  and  vindicate,  and  by  another  to  attack,  this  much-discussed 
system  of  philosophy.  This  again  is  a  coincidence,  but  no  mere  coin- 
cidence. 

There  remains  one  striking  detail  of  the  Bergsonian  conception  that 
must  be  mentioned  in  closing,  viz.,  his  conclusion  that,  under  some  condi- 
tions, effects  may  precede  rather  than  follow  their  causes.  Perhaps  it  is 
justifiable  here  to  quote  somewhat  at  length.  "In  resuming  a  conversa- 
tion which  had  been  interrupted  for  a  few  moments  we  have  happened  to 
notice  that  both  we  ourselves  and  our  friend  were  thinking  of  some  new 

'2'  Solomon,  The  Phil,  of  Bergson,  Mind,  1911,  pp.  15-40,    and    David    Morrison, 
Review  of  Eucken's  Geisl.  Strom,  in  Mind  for  1905,  p.  268. 
'2*  Revue  de  Philosophic,  April,  1905. 
'^Mind,  1911,  pp.  357-378. 


TWO  IMPORTANT  THEORIES  OF  TIME  93 

object  at  the  same  time.    The  reason  is,  it  will  be  said,  that  each  has 
followed  up  for  his  own  part  the  natural  development  of  the  idea  at  which 
the  conversation  had  stopped:  the  same  series  of  associations  has  been 
formed  on  both  sides.— No  doubt  this  interpretation  holds  good  in  a 
fairly  large  number  of  cases;  careful  inquiry,  however,  has  led  us  to  an 
unexpected  result.     It  is  a  fact  that  the  two  speakers  do  connect  the  new 
subject  of  conversation  with  the  former  one:  they  will  even  point  out  the 
intervening  ideas;  but,  curiously  enough,  they  will  not  always  connect 
the  new  idea,  which  they  have  both  reached,  with  the  same  point  of  the 
preceding  conversation,  and  the  two  series  of  intervening  associations 
may  be  quite  different.     WTiat  are  we  to  conclude  from  this,  if  not  that 
this  common  idea  is  due  to  an  unknown  cause— perhaps  to  some  physical 
influence— and  that,  in  order  to  justify  its  emergence,  it  has  called  forth 
a  series  of  antecedents  which  explain  it  and  which  seem  to  be  its  cause, 
but  are  really  its  effect.  "^^^    And  "WHien  a  patient  carries  out  at  the 
appointed  time  the  suggestion  received  in  the  hypnotic  state,  the  act 
which  he  performs  is  brought  about,  according  to  him,  by  the  preceding 
series  of  his  conscious  states.     Yet  these  states  are  really  effects  and  not 
causes:  it  was  necessary  that  the  act  should  take  place;  it  was  also  neces- 
sary that  the  patient  should  explain  it  to  himself;  and  it  is  the  future  act 
which  determined,  by  a  kind  of  attraction,  the  whole  series  of  psychic 
states  of  which  it  is  to  be  the  natural  consequence,  "i"    The  association- 
alist's  way  of  accounting  for  these  phenomena  is  so  familiar  that  we  need 
not  even  discuss  it.     It  is  important,  however,  to  see  (1)  that  if  Professor 
Bergson's  account  is  the  true  one,  we  have  here  a  wonderfully  vivid 
argument  for  the  transcendence  by  consciousness  of  the  simple  mechani- 
cal time  series;  and  (2)  that  whether  the  account  he  gives  is  vaUd  or  not, 
Mr.  Balsillie  (in  the  article  above  referred  to)  is  certainly  right  in  seeing 
in  the  type  of  explanation  offered  a  conclusive  evidence  that  the  author's 
pure  duration  is  an  expHcit  form  of  time-transcendence. 

Apropos  of  the  question  whether  an  effect  may  precede  its  cause, 
there  is  another  phenomenon  that  is  even  less  susceptible  to  associational 
explanation  than  those  mentioned  in  the  foregoing  paragraph.  Dream 
life  abounds  in  occurrences  like  the  following:  I  am  inflating  a  balloon 
and  keep  blowing  it  up  larger  and  larger  until  Anally  it  bursts  with  a  loud 
report,  and  I  find  that  I  have  been  awakened  by  the  bang  of  a  door.  Or 
again,  I  drive  a  hard  bargain  with  the  guide  to  escort  me  to  the  top  of  the 
Great  Pyramid.     Finally  agreed,  he  leaps  upon  the  first  high  step  and 

>2«  Time  and  Free  Will,  p.  156. 
»"  Ibid.,  p.  157. 


94  SOME  VIEWS  OF  THE  TIME  PROBLEM 

says  "  Come  up! "  and  I  find  that  I  have  really  been  called  to  "get  up, " — 
that  it  is  breakfast  time,  etc.  The  climax  of  the  dream  is  obviously  due 
to  an  outer  cause,  but  the  dream  plot  "works  up  to  it"  whereas  the  ex- 
ternal cause  was  sudden  and  quite  without  discernible  antecedents.  Of 
course,  it  is  possible  to  explain  these  cases  too  without  resorting  to  the 
rather  ulterior  consideration  of  real  time-transcendence  (by  saying,  for 
instance,  that  the  sleeper  did  detect  the  immediate  antecedents  of  the 
disturbing  incident  and  that  the  whole  dream  drama  took  place  in  a  few 
instants  of  time,  or,  again,  that  it  is  an  illusion  of  memory)  but  it  seems  to 
me  that  these  dream  events  may  at  least  serve  as  more  probable  illustra- 
tions of  Professor  Bergson's  principle  than  the  examples  he  himself  gives. 
Finally,  it  may  be  well  to  state  once  more  the  general  position  of  this 
paper.  The  above  detailed  criticism  has  been  only  to  a  minor  degree 
directed  against  the  general  conceptions  of  the  great  French  philosopher. 
As  a  rule  the  writer  finds  himself  in  most  enthusiastic  agreement  with 
them.  Our  objection  has  been  chiefly  to  the  terms  used,  not  the  ideas 
back  of  them.  After  giving  some  reasons  for  thinking  that  the  facts  of 
consciousness  cannot  be  divested  of  all  quantitative  relationships,  even 
those  of  greater  and  less,  etc.,  and  that  a  multiphcity  that  has  no  affilia- 
tion to  number  has  yet  to  be  demonstrated,  we  have  tried  to  show  (1) 
that  quantitative  time  cannot  be,  or  at  least  has  not  successfully  been, 
identified  with  space;  and  (2)  that  the  pure  duration  which  is  qualitative 
only,  which  has  no  relation  to  magnitude,  which  is  not  limited  in  its 
existence  to  the  fleeting  moment,  but  in  which  the  past  lives  and  the 
future  is  foreshadowed, — this  pure  duration  which  is  the  necessary  pre- 
supposition of  knowledge,  of  change,  and  of  freedom,  and  is  the  ultimate 
"ens  reahssimum"  of  the  inner  conscious  life,  is  essentially  identical  with 
the  time-transcendence  of  the  philosophies  of  the  schools,  and  in  particu- 
lar with  the  "ewiges  Geistesleben"  that  is  the  heart  of  Professor  Eucken's 
philosophy.  Although  the  two  men  here  discussed  start  from  quite 
different  data,  and  follow  different  aims  by  altogether  different  methods, 
we  are  satisfied  that,  so  far  as  the  time  problem  is  concerned,  they  reach 
nearly  the  same  conclusions.  And  these  fundamental  similarities  in 
spite  of  outward  differences  are,  from  a  general  standpoint,  more  impor- 
tant than  the  individual  views  of  the  two  men,  immensely  interesting 
though  the  latter  may  be. 


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Genese  de  I'Idee  de  Temps. 
Hegel,  G.  W.  F. 

Logic,  pp.  195,  343  ff. ,3715. 
Herbart,  G.  F. 

Werke,  Band  IV,  pp.  93  ff.,  127-132,  233,  240,  248  ff. 
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Phil.  Prim.,  pp.  57-58. 
Hodgson,  Shadworth. 

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Hume,  David. 

Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  pp.  26-68. 
Isenkrahe,  C.  Th. 

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